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Reading Robert Burns: Texts, Contexts, Transformations (Poetry and Song in the Age of Revolution #6)
by Carol McGuirkRobert Burns is Scotland’s greatest cultural icon. Yet, despite his continued popularity, critical work has been compromised by the myths that have built up around him. McGuirk focuses on Burns’s poems and songs, analysing his use of both vernacular Scots and literary English to provide a unique reading of his work.
Reading Robert Greene: Recovering Shakespeare’s Rival (Routledge Studies in Shakespeare)
by Darren Freebury-JonesRobert Greene holds a significant place in our understanding of Elizabethan literature. This book offers the most rigorous attempt yet undertaken to determine the scope of the playwright’s canon through analyses of Greene’s verse style, vocabulary, rhyming habits, and the dramatist’s phraseology in his attested plays and in comparison to four plays that have long been on the margins of Greene’s corpus: Locrine, Selimus, George a Greene, and A Knack to Know a Knave. The book defines the ranges for Greene’s stylistic habits for the very first time, and proceeds to identify parallels of thought, language, and overall dramaturgy that reveal a single author’s creative consciousness. This volume also casts light on Greene as a more collaborative dramatist than has hitherto been acknowledged. Through emphasizing the immediate surroundings in which Greene was writing – the flourishing of popular theatres in two compact areas of London, in which each theatre company and their dramatists kept a close eye on what their competitors were producing – Greene emerges as an influential playwright, whose restored oeuvre enables us to establish new ways in which his dramatic methods impacted other writers of the period, including Shakespeare.
Reading Roman Comedy: Poetics and Playfulness in Plautus and Terence
by Alison SharrockFor many years the domain of specialists in early Latin, in complex metres, and in the reconstruction of texts, Roman comedy has only recently begun to establish itself in the mainstream of Classical literary criticism. Where most recent books stress the original performance as the primary location for the encountering of the plays, this book finds the locus of meaning and appreciation in the activity of a reader, albeit one whose manner of reading necessarily involves the imaginative reconstruction of performance. The texts are treated, and celebrated, as literary devices, with programmatic beginnings, middles, ends, and intertexts. All the extant plays of Plautus and Terence have at least a bit part in this book, which seeks to expose the authors' fabulous artificiality and artifice, while playing along with their differing but interrelated poses of generic humility.
Reading Romantic Poetry (Wiley Blackwell Reading Poetry #12)
by Fiona StaffordReading Romantic Poetry introduces the major themes and preoccupations, and the key poems and players of a period convulsed by revolution, prolonged warfare and political crisis. Provides a clear, lively introduction to Romantic Poetry, backed by academic research and marked by its accessibility to students with little prior experience of poetry Introduces many of the major topics of the age, from politics to publishing, from slavery to sociability, from Milton to the mind of man Encourages direct responses to poems by opening up different aspects of the literature and fresh approaches to reading Discusses the poets' own reading and experience of being read, as well as analysis of the sounds of key poems and the look of the poem on the page Deepens understanding of poems through awareness of their literary, historical, political and personal contexts Includes the major poets of the period, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Burns and Clare —as well as a host of less familiar writers, including women
Reading Ronell
by Diane DavisAvital Ronell has won worldwide acclaim for her work across literature and philosophy, psychoanalysis and popular culture, political theory and feminism, art and rhetoric, drugs and deconstruction. In works such as The Test Drive, Stupidity, Crack Wars, and The Telephone Book, she has perpetually raised new and powerful questions about how we think, what thinking does, and how we fool ourselves about the troubled space between thought and action. In this collection, some of today's most distinguished and innovative thinkers turn their attention to Ronell's teaching, writing, and provocations, observing how Ronell reads and what comes from reading her. By reading Ronell, and reading Ronell reading, contributors examine the ethico-political implications of her radical dislocations and carefully explicate, extend, and explore the paraconcepts addressed in her works.
Reading Russian Literature, 1980–2024: Literary Consumption, Memory and Identity
by Otto Boele Dorine SchellensThis edited collection focuses on the nexus between literary consumption, memory and collective identity formation in Russia from the 1980s until today. It challenges perceived notions about the reduced social significance and identity-building potential of contemporary Russian literature. Drawing on a diverse set of primary source materials, ranging from memoirs, diaries and essays to fan art and BookToks, the collection seeks to do justice to the diversity of an enormous reading public that is often routinely referred to as the ‘Russian reader’. The case studies explore the reading habits and self-understanding of very different audiences that are dispersed along regional, gender, generational and technological divides. In doing so, this collection examines both the continuities and shifts in the multifaceted relationship between literary consumption, memory and identity during the profound and ongoing transformations in Russian society and its literary landscape.
Reading Russian Sources: A Student's Guide to Text and Visual Sources from Russian History (Routledge Guides to Using Historical Sources)
by George GilbertReading Russian Sources is an accessible and comprehensive guide that introduces students to the wide range of sources that can be used to engage with Russian history from the early medieval to the late Soviet periods. Divided into two parts, the book begins by considering approaches that can be taken towards the study of Russian history using primary sources. It then moves on to assess both textual and visual sources, including memoirs, autobiographies, journals, newspapers, art, maps, film and TV, enabling the reader to engage with and make sense of the burgeoning number of different sources and the ways they are used. Contributors illuminate key issues in the study of different areas of Russia’s history through their analysis of source materials, exploring some of the major issues in using different source types and reflecting recent discoveries that are changing the field. In so doing, the book orientates students within the broader methodological and conceptual debates that are defining the field and shaping the way Russian history is studied. Chronologically wide-ranging and supported by further reading, along with suggestions to help students guide their own enquiries, Reading Russian Sources is the ideal resource for any student undertaking research on Russian history.
Reading Sappho: Contemporary Approaches (Classics and Contemporary Thought #2)
by Ellen GreeneReading Sappho considers Sappho's poetry as a powerful, influential voice in the Western cultural tradition. Essays are divided into four sections: "Language and Literary Context," "Homer and Oral Tradition", "Ritual and Social Context", and "Women's Erotics". Contributors focus on literary history, mythic traditions, cultural studies, performance studies, recent work in feminist theory, and more.A legendary literary figure, Sappho has attracted readers, critics, and biographers ever since she composed poems on the island of Lesbos at the close of the seventh century B.C. Bringing together some of the best recent criticism on the subject, this volume, together with Re-Reading Sappho, represents the first anthology of Sappho scholarship, drawing attention to Sappho's importance as a poet and reflecting the diversity of critical approaches in classical and literary scholarship during the last several decades.
Reading Sartre
by Joseph S. CatalanoIn this volume, Joseph Catalano offers an in-depth exploration of Jean-Paul Sartre's four major philosophical writings: Being and Nothingness, Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, and The Family Idiot. These works have been immensely influential, but they are long and difficult and thus challenging for both students and scholars. Catalano here demonstrates the interrelation of these four works, their internal logic, and how they provide insights into important but overlooked aspects of Sartre's thought, such as the body, childhood, and evil. The book begins with Sartre's final work, The Family Idiot, and systematically works backward to Being and Nothingness. Catalano then repeats the study by advancing chronologically, beginning with Being and Nothingness and ending with The Family Idiot and an afterword on Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Readers will appreciate Catalano's subtle readings as well as the new insights that he brings to Sartre's oeuvre.
Reading Science: Critical and Functional Perspectives on Discourses of Science
by J. R. Martin Robert VeelReading Science looks at the distinctive language of science and technology and the role it plays in building up scientific understandings of the world. It brings together discourse analysis and critical theory for the first time in a single volume.This edited collection examines science discourse from a number of perspectives, drawing on new rhetoric, functional linguistics and critical theory. It explores this language in research and industrial contexts as well as in educational settings and in popular science writing and science fiction. The papers also include consideration of the role of images (tables and figures) in science writing and the importance of reading science discourse as multi-modal text.The internationally renowned contributors include M. A. K. Halliday, Charles Bazerman and Jay Lemke.
Reading Sedgwick (Theory Q)
by Lauren BerlantOver the course of her long career, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick became one of the most important voices in queer theory, and her calls for reparative criticism and reading practices grounded in affect and performance have transformed understandings of affect, intimacy, politics, and identity. With marked tenderness, the contributors to Reading Sedgwick reflect on Sedgwick's many critical inventions, from her elucidation of poetry's close relation to criticism and development of new versions of queer performativity to highlighting the power of writing to engender new forms of life. As the essays in Reading Sedgwick demonstrate, Sedgwick's work is not only an ongoing vital force in queer theory and affect theory; it can help us build a more positive world in the midst of the bleak contemporary moment. Contributors. Lauren Berlant, Kathryn Bond Stockton, Judith Butler, Lee Edelman, Jason Edwards, Ramzi Fawaz, Denis Flannery, Jane Gallop, Jonathan Goldberg, Meridith Kruse, Michael Moon, José Esteban Muñoz, Chris Nealon, Andrew Parker, H. A. Sedgwick, Karin Sellberg, Michael D. Snediker, Melissa Solomon, Robyn Wiegman
Reading Sexualities: Hermeneutic Theory and the Future of Queer Studies
by Donald E. HallReading Sexualities confronts the reigning practices, priorities, and preoccupations of queer theory and sexuality studies. Looking at a range of texts, from novels to travel narratives to internet porn, Donald E. Hall deftly weaves the theoretical with the literary in order to: examine the vexed ethical, critical, and political questions arising from sexual consumerism and cross-cultural encounters read the changing landscape of sexual identity, finding great cause for optimism and enthusiastic engagement urge readers to embrace a far-reaching dialogic practice as a mechanism for furthering radical social change. Reading Sexualities shows how our sexual desires and bases for identification are being widely challenged and changed. Drawing on hermeneutic theory and the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hall argues that by approaching sexual diversity with openness and humility, we become active participants in the politically urgent process of reading the self through the perspective of the other.
Reading Shakespeare Historically
by Lisa JardineReading Shakespeare Historically is a passionate, provocative book by one of the most renowned and popular Renaissance scholars writing today. Charting ten years of critical development, these challenging, witty essays shed new light on Renaissance studies. It also raises intriguing questions about how the culture and history of the past illuminates the key social and political issues of today. Lisa Jardine re-reads Renaissance drama in its historical and cultural context, from laws of defamation in Othello to the competing loyalties of companionate marriage and male friendship in The Changeling. In doing so she reveals a wealth of new insights, sometimes surprising but always original and engrossing. At the same time, these essays also provide a fascinating account of the rise of feminist scholarship since the 1980s and the diversifying of `new historicist' approaches over the same period. Reading Shakespeare Historically will fascinate and provoke students of shakespeare and his historical age, and general readers with an urge to understand how the culture and history of our past illuminates the key scoial and political issues of today.
Reading Shakespeare Reading Me
by Leonard BarkanA gripping, funny, joyful account of how the books you read shape your own life in surprising and profound ways.Bookworms know what scholars of literature are trained to forget: that when they devour a work of literary fiction, whatever else they may be doing, they are reading about themselves. Read Shakespeare, and you become Cleopatra, Hamlet, or Bottom. Or at the very least, you experience the plays as if you are in a small room alone with them, and they are speaking to your life, your sensibility.Drawing on fifty years as a Shakespearean, Leonard Barkan has produced a captivating book that asks us to reconsider what it means to read. Barkan violates the rule of distance he was taught and has always taught his students. He asks: Where does this brilliantly contrived fiction actually touch me? Where is Shakespeare in effect telling the story of my life?King Lear, for Barkan, raises unanswerable questions about what exactly a father does after planting the seed. Mothers from Gertrude to Lady Macbeth are reconsidered in the light of the author’s experience as a son of a former flapper. The sonnets and comedies are seen through the eyes of a gay man who nevertheless weeps with joy when all the heterosexual couples are united at the end. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is interpreted through the author’s joyous experience of performing the role of Bottom and finding his aesthetic faith in the pantheon of antiquity. And the exquisitely poetical history play Richard II intersects with, of all things, Ru Paul’s Drag Race.Full of engrossing stories, from family secrets to the world of the theater, and written with humor and genuine excitement about literary experiences worthy of our attention and our love, Reading Shakespeare Reading Me makes Shakespeare’s plays come alive in new ways.
Reading Shakespeare in Jewish Theological Frameworks: Shylock Beyond the Holocaust (Routledge Studies in Shakespeare)
by Caroline Wiesenthal LionReading Shakespeare in Jewish Theological Frameworks: Shylock Beyond the Holocaust uses Jewish theology to mount a courageous new reading of a four-hundred-year-old play, The Merchant of Venice. While victimhood and antisemitism have been the understandable focus of the Merchant critical history for decades, Lion urges scholars, performers, and readers to see beyond the racism in Shakespeare's plays by recovering Shakespearean themes of potentiality and human flourishing as they emerge within the Jewish tradition itself. Lion joins the race conversation in Shakespeare studies today by drawing on the intellectual history and oppression of the Jewish people, borrowing from thinkers Franz Rosenzweig and Abraham Joshua Heschel as well as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and rabbis from the Talmud to today. This volume interweaves post-confessional, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, and mystical ideas with Shakespeare's poetry and opens conversations of prophecy, love, spirituality, care, and community. It concludes with brief critical sketches of Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, and Macbeth to demonstrate that Shakespeare when interpreted through Jewish theological frameworks can point to post-credal solutions and transformed societal paradigms of repair that encourage action and the shaping of a finer world.
Reading Shakespeare in the Movies: Non-Adaptations and Their Meaning (Reproducing Shakespeare)
by Eric S. MallinReading Shakespeare in the Movies: Non-Adaptations and Their Meaning analyzes the unacknowledged, covert presence of Shakespearean themes, structures, characters, and symbolism in selected films. Writers and directors who forge an unconscious, unintentional connection to Shakespeare’s work create non-adaptations, cinema that is unexpectedly similar to certain Shakespeare plays while remaining independent as art. These films can illuminate core semantic issues in those plays in ways that direct adaptations cannot. Eric S. Mallin explores how Shakespeare illuminates these movies, analyzing the ways that The Godfather, Memento, Titanic, Birdman, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre take on new life in dialogue with the famous playwright. In addition to challenging our ideas about adaptation, Mallin works to inspire new awareness of the meanings of Shakespearean stories in the contemporary world.
Reading Shakespeare through Drama (Elements in Shakespeare and Pedagogy)
by Jane Coles Maggie PitfieldReading Shakespeare through Drama arises out of case study research which focuses on reading as a socio-cultural practice. Underpinned by theories of reading, learning, drama and play, it is, nevertheless, rooted in the everyday work of secondary English classrooms. Utilising the dialogic ambiguities inherent in Shakespeare's playscripts, this collaborative approach to reading pays particular attention to adolescent readers as meaning-makers and cultural producers. The authors examine different iterations of 'active Shakespeare' pedagogies in the UK, the USA and Australia, drawing a distinction between 'reading through drama' as an approach and the theatre inflected practices promoted by well-known arts-based institutions. Observational and interview data highlight the importance of addressing issues concerning identity and representation that are inevitably raised by the study of canonical literature. Importantly, this Element situates teachers' practice within broader ideological contexts at institutional and national policy level, particularly from the perspective of England's highly regulated system of schooling.
Reading Shakespeare through Philosophy: Reading Shakespeare Through Philosophy (Routledge Studies in Shakespeare)
by Peter Kishore SavalReading Shakespeare through Philosophy advocates that the beauty of Shakespearean drama is inseparable from its philosophical power. Shakespeare’s plays make demands on us even beyond our linguistic attention and historical empathy: they require thinking, and the concepts of philosophy can provide us with tools to aid us in that thinking. This volume examines how philosophy can help us to re-imagine Shakespeare’s treatment of individuality, character, and destiny, particularly at certain moments in a play when a character’s relationship to space or time becomes an enigma to us. The author focuses on the dramatization of seemingly magical relationships between the individual and the cosmos, exploring and rethinking the meanings of 'individual', 'cosmos' and 'magic' through a conceptually acute reading of Shakespeare's plays. This book draws upon a variety of thinkers including Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz and Kant, in search of a revitalized philosophical criticism of Julius Caesar, Love’s Labor’s Lost, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, and Twelfth Night.
Reading Shakespeare's Poetry (Wiley Blackwell Reading Poetry)
by Dympna CallaghanReading Shakespeare’s Poetry A lively exploration of Shakespeare’s poems and how they speak to readers Reading Shakespeare’s Poetry presents a fresh interpretation of Shakespeare’s non-dramatic poems, providing insights into the individual poems, their themes and composition, and their relation to the cultural context of Shakespeare’s world. Dympna Callaghan considers what makes Shakespeare’s language poetic and shows how his poetry is comprised not only of lyrical intensity but also of the language of everyday life. Presented chronologically, lucidly-written chapters examine Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, The Phoenix and the Turtle, the Sonnets, and A Lover’s Complaint. Special attention is paid to the distinctive ways in which lineation, rhyme, verse forms, and meter serve to delineate or erase the boundaries of Shakespeare’s poetry. Throughout the book, the author explains how Shakespeare’s language is influenced by predecessors such as Ovid and Petrarch while highlighting how ideas about the social and cultural function of poetry permeate Shakespeare’s works. Offers an eminently readable yet scholarly exploration of the literary importance of Shakespeare’s poems Explains the technical features of Shakespeare’s poetic language Addresses the significance of the material form in which Shakespeare’s poems appear Includes a discussion of songs, poems, and sonnets embedded in Shakespeare’s dramatic verse Reading Shakespeare’s Poetry is both a fresh and indispensable guide to the poems and a significant critical intervention. This is a must-have book for scholars, students, and general readers alike.
Reading Sideways: The Queer Politics of Art in Modern American Fiction
by Dana SeitlerReading Sideways explores the pivotal role that various art forms played in American literary fiction in direct relation to the politics of gender and sexuality in works of modern American literature. It tracks the crosswise circulation of aesthetic ideas in fiction and argues that at stake in the aesthetic turn of these works was not only the theorization of aesthetic experience but also an engagement with political arguments and debates about available modes of sociability and sexual expression. To track these engagements, its author, Dana Seitler, performs a method she calls “lateral reading,” a mode of interpretation that moves horizontally through various historical entanglements and across the fields of the arts to make sense of—and see in a new light—their connections, challenges, and productive frictions. Each chapter takes a different art form as its object: sculpture, portraiture, homecraft, and opera. These art forms appear in some of the major works of literature of the period central to negotiations of gender, race, and sexuality, including those by Henry James, Davis, Willa Cather, Du Bois, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary Wilkins Freeman. But the literary texts that each chapter of this book takes as its motivation not only include a specific art form or object as central to its politics, they also build an alternative aesthetic vocabulary through which they seek to alter, challenge, or participate in the making of social and sexual life. By cultivating a counter-aesthetics of the unfinished, the uncertain, the small, the low, and the allusive, these fictions recognize other ways of knowing and being than those oriented toward reductively gendered accounts of beauty, classed imperatives established by the norms of taste, or apolitical treatises of sexual disinterestedness. And within them—and through “reading sideways”—we can witness the coming-into-legibility of a set of diffuse practices that provide a pivot point for engaging the political methods of minoritized subjects at the turn of the twentieth century.
Reading Sixteenth-Century Poetry (Wiley Blackwell Reading Poetry Ser. #7)
by Patrick CheneyReading Sixteenth-Century Poetry combines close readings of individual poems with a critical consideration of the historical context in which they were written. Informative and original, this book has been carefully designed to enable readers to understand, enjoy, and be inspired by sixteenth-century poetry. Close reading of a wide variety of sixteenth-century poems, canonical and non-canonical, by men and by women, from print and manuscript culture, across the major literary modes and genres Poems read within their historical context, with reference to five major cultural revolutions: Renaissance humanism, the Reformation, the modern nation-state, companionate marriage, and the scientific revolution Offers in-depth discussion of Skelton, Wyatt, Surrey, Isabella Whitney, Gascoigne, Philip Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Mary Sidney Herbert, Donne, and Shakespeare Presents a separate study of all five of Shakespeare’s major poems - Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, 'The Phoenix and Turtle,' the Sonnets, and A Lover's Complaint- in the context of his dramatic career Discusses major works of literary criticism by Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Philip Sidney, George Puttenham, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Seamus Heaney, Adrienne Rich, and Helen Vendler
Reading Skin In Medieval Literature And Culture
by Katie L. WalterSkin is a multifarious image in medieval culture: the material basis for forming a sense of self and relation to the world, as well as a powerful literary and visual image. This book explores the presence of skin in medieval literature and culture from a range of literary, religious, aesthetic, historical, medical, and theoretical perspectives.
Reading Slaughter: Abattoir Fictions, Space, and Empathy in Late Modernity (Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature)
by Sune BorkfeltReading Slaughter: Abattoir Fictions, Space, and Empathy in Late Modernity examines literary depictions of slaughterhouses from the development of the industrial abattoir in the late nineteenth century to today. The book focuses on how increasing and ongoing isolation and concealment of slaughter from the surrounding society affects readings and depictions of slaughter and abattoirs in literature, and on the degree to which depictions of animals being slaughtered creates an avenue for empathic reactions in the reader or the opportunity for reflections on human-animal relations. Through chapters on abattoir fictions in relation to narrative empathy, anthropomorphism, urban spaces, rural spaces, human identities and horror fiction, Sune Borkfelt contributes to debates in literary animal studies, human-animal studies and beyond.
Reading Smart, 2nd Edition: Simple Strategies for Improved Reading
by Princeton ReviewSIMPLE STRATEGIES CAN MAKE YOU A BETTER READER.Being "good at reading" isn't just about speed--it's about being able to read through info, quickly sort out what's important, and draw useful connections. That's why we at The Princeton Review created Reading Smart, a book designed to help people who have a hard time keeping up with assignments, understanding novels, or even absorbing news articles. Reading Smart will give you the skills and strategies you need to read efficiently and build your confidence as both a reader and thinker.Within Reading Smart, you'll find:TECHNIQUES THAT ACTUALLY WORK.* Straightforward advice for boosting reading comprehension* Specific techniques and step-by-step approaches to all types of texts, from newspapers to novels to test passages* Tips for pacing yourself to get the most out of what you read* Comprehensive guidance on how to extract important information from passages, whether it's big-picture concepts or key detailsPRACTICE YOUR WAY TO EXCELLENCE.* Reading comprehension drills and exercises in every chapter to help improve your scores on standardized and classroom tests* Sample passages to help you get comfortable with different kinds of texts* Bonus online drills to help reinforce the reading skills and strategies covered in the book
Reading Sounds: Closed-Captioned Media and Popular Culture
by Sean ZdenekImagine a common movie scene: a hero confronts a villain. Captioning such a moment would at first glance seem as basic as transcribing the dialogue. But consider the choices involved: How do you convey the sarcasm in a comeback? Do you include a henchman's muttering in the background? Does the villain emit a scream, a grunt, or a howl as he goes down? And how do you note a gunshot without spoiling the scene? These are the choices closed captioners face every day. Captioners must decide whether and how to describe background noises, accents, laughter, musical cues, and even silences. When captioners describe a sound--or choose to ignore it--they are applying their own subjective interpretations to otherwise objective noises, creating meaning that does not necessarily exist in the soundtrack or the script. Reading Sounds looks at closed-captioning as a potent source of meaning in rhetorical analysis. Through nine engrossing chapters, Sean Zdenek demonstrates how the choices captioners make affect the way deaf and hard of hearing viewers experience media. He draws on hundreds of real-life examples, as well as interviews with both professional captioners and regular viewers of closed captioning. Zdenek's analysis is an engrossing look at how we make the audible visible, one that proves that better standards for closed captioning create a better entertainment experience for all viewers.