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Very Like a Whale: The Assessment of Writing Programs
by Edward M. White Norbert Elliot Irvin PeckhamWinner of the 2015 CPTSC Award for Excellence in Program Assessment Written for those who design, redesign, and assess writing programs, Very Like a Whale is an intensive discussion of writing program assessment issues. Taking its title from Hamlet, the book explores the multifaceted forces that shape writing programs and the central role these programs can and should play in defining college education. Given the new era of assessment in higher education, writing programs must provide valid evidence that they are serving students, instructors, administrators, alumni, accreditors, and policymakers. This book introduces new conceptualizations associated with assessment, making them clear and available to those in the profession of rhetoric and composition/writing studies. It also offers strategies that aid in gathering information about the relative success of a writing program in achieving its identified goals. Philosophically and historically aligned with quantitative approaches, White, Elliot, and Peckham use case study and best-practice scholarship to demonstrate the applicability of their innovative approach, termed Design for Assessment (DFA). Well grounded in assessment theory, Very Like a Whale will be of practical use to new and seasoned writing program administrators alike, as well as to any educator involved with the accreditation process.
A Very Nice Rejection Letter: Diary of a Novelist
by Chris Paling'Like all good diarists Paling's musings are funny, tender and uncensored' Sunday Times6 April 2007Writing income for the year so far: minus £300'I feel that this might just be the year in which something happens. Then again it might not. But hope drives all writers on.'It's unlikely that you'll know Chris Paling's face or have heard his name. This is his diary of trying to make a living as a writer, through the typical career trajectory of what is deemed a 'mid-list novelist'. Publishing rule 6: there is no such thing as a 'low-list' novelist.In renumeration terms, writing is a career that often ends in disappointment and despair, and occasionally disgrace. Paling artfully explores what compels him and so many others to write - the battling joys and agonies of when that compulsion beds itself in one's psyche, and a day without writing is a day wasted. A fascinating insight into the writing process, he tracks the need to write something new, or something old in a new way, something relevant, something that needs to be written when very little actually does, in search of that ever-elusive goal of being 'in print'.By turns moving, wry and brutally honest, A Very Nice Rejection Letter unveils the rewarding yet soul-baring life of a novelist. At its heart is a love letter to the art of writing but this delightful book is also a profound reflection on the forces that drive us all.
A Very Queer Family Indeed: Sex, Religion, and the Bensons in Victorian Britain
by Simon Goldhill“We can begin with a kiss, though this will not turn out to be a love story, at least not a love story of anything like the usual kind.” So begins A Very Queer Family Indeed, which introduces us to the extraordinary Benson family. Edward White Benson became Archbishop of Canterbury at the height of Queen Victoria’s reign, while his wife, Mary, was renowned for her wit and charm—the prime minister once wondered whether she was “the cleverest woman in England or in Europe.” The couple’s six precocious children included E. F. Benson, celebrated creator of the Mapp and Lucia novels, and Margaret Benson, the first published female Egyptologist. What interests Simon Goldhill most, however, is what went on behind the scenes, which was even more unusual than anyone could imagine. Inveterate writers, the Benson family spun out novels, essays, and thousands of letters that open stunning new perspectives—including what it might mean for an adult to kiss and propose marriage to a twelve-year-old girl, how religion in a family could support or destroy relationships, or how the death of a child could be celebrated. No other family has left such detailed records about their most intimate moments, and in these remarkable accounts, we see how family life and a family’s understanding of itself took shape during a time when psychoanalysis, scientific and historical challenges to religion, and new ways of thinking about society were developing. This is the story of the Bensons, but it is also more than that—it is the story of how society transitioned from the high Victorian period into modernity.
The Very Thing
by Elaine Mei Virginia Arnold James Flood Diane Lapp [et al.]The Very Thing by Elaine Mei, Virginia Arnold, James Flood, Diane Lapp [et al.]
The Very Thought of Herbert Blau
by Clark Lunberry Joseph RoachHerbert Blau (1926–2013) was the most influential theater theorist, practitioner, and educator of his generation. He was the leading American interpreter of the works of Samuel Beckett and as a director was instrumental in introducing works of the European avant-garde to American audiences. He was also one of the most far-reaching and thoughtful American theorists of theater and performance, and author of influential books such as The Dubious Spectacle, The Audience, and Take Up the Bodies: Theater at the Vanishing Point. In The Very Thought of Herbert Blau, distinguished artists and scholars offer reflections on what made Blau's contributions so visionary, transformative, and unforgettable, and why his ideas endure in both seminar rooms and studios. The contributors, including Lee Breuer, Sue-Ellen Case, Gautam Dasgupta, Elin Diamond, S. E. Gontarski, Linda Gregerson, Martin Harries, Bill Irwin, Julia Jarcho, Anthony Kubiak, Daniel Listoe, Clark Lunberry, Bonnie Marranca, Peggy Phelan, Joseph Roach, Richard Schechner, Morton Subotnick, Julie Taymor, and Gregory Whitehead, respond to Blau's fierce and polymorphous intellect, his relentless drive and determination, and his audacity, his authority, to think, as he frequently insisted, "at the very nerve ends of thought."
Veteran Poetics: British Literature in the Age of Mass Warfare, 1790–2015
by Kate McLoughlinIn this first full-length study of the war veteran in literature, Kate McLoughlin draws new critical attention to a figure central to national life. Offering fresh readings of canonical and non-canonical works, she shows how authors from William Wordsworth to J. K. Rowling have deployed veterans to explore questions that are simultaneously personal, political, and philosophical: What does a community owe to those who serve it? What can be recovered from the past? Do people stay the same over time? Are there right times of life at which to do certain things? Is there value in experience? How can wisdom be shared? Veteran Poetics features veterans who travel in time, cause havoc with their reappearances, solve murders, refuse to stop talking about the wars they have been in, and refuse to say a word about them. Through this last trait, they also prompt consideration of possible critical responses to silence.
Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch: Let Verbs Power Your Writing
by Constance HaleA writing handbook that celebrates the infinite pizzazz of verbs. Writers know it instinctively: Verbs make a sentence zing. Grammar gurus agree: Drama in writing emerges from the interplay of a subject (noun) and a predicate (verb). Constance Hale, the best-selling author of Sin and Syntax, zooms in on the colorful world of verbs. Synthesizing the pedagogical and the popular, the scholarly and the scandalous, Hale combines the wit of Bill Bryson with the practical wisdom of William Zinsser. She marches through linguistic history to paint a layered picture of our language--from before it really existed to the quirky usages we see online today. She warns about habits to avoid and inspires with samples of brilliant writing. A veteran teacher, Hale gives writing prompts along the way, helping readers "try, do, write, play." Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch guides us to more powerful writing by demonstrating how to use great verbs with style.
Viagem ao sonho americano
by Isabel LucasUma viagem literária (e muito mais) pelos Estados Unidos da América, com Trump em pano de fundo. UM DOS MELHORES LIVROS DO ANO: Revista Visão * Comunidade Cultura e Arte * blogue literário Deus me livro O que é a América? Numa viagem pelo país que (ainda) é visto como o centro do mundo, Isabel Lucas sonda a condição americana, os seus mitos, paradoxos, medos e fragilidades, mas também a sua grandeza e capacidade de reinvenção. O ponto de partida para esta viagem foi a literatura, esse território onde ainda há lugar para questionar, desconstruir, reimaginar. Partiu de autores e obras de referência e explorou as suas geografias: a New Bedford de Moby Dick, a Newark de Philip Roth, o Texas de Cormac McCarthy, o Sul de Toni Morrison, o mapa da classe média de Richard Ford e John Updike, entre muitos outros. Nestes e noutros lugares, reais e imaginados, encontrou uma América que tem medo de se olhar nos olhos e outra América, a que quer olhar para dentro para se purgar dos males e avançar. Descobriu uma América que se fecha perante o desconhecido e outra América, a que vê na diferença a sua maior riqueza. Partindo dos livros, esta é também, inevitavelmente, uma viagem pelas ruas da América, pelas suas gentes, pelas vozes anónimas e pelos seus mitos, entre eles, o tal sonho fundador. Afinal, o que é o sonho americano? Será o sonho de um país ou o sonho de um mundo inteiro? Os elogios da crítica: «A propósito de sonho, não posso deixar de ressalvar, neste livro da Isabel, o privilégio de termos simultaneamente a repórter que nos descreve com argúcia e sensibilidade os muitos lugares de que se faz uma viagem de um ano e 97.000 quilómetros, a entrevistadora que nos revela os nossos semelhantes, iluminando-os, a critica literária que escolheu dezasseis obras fundamentais da literatura norte americana e depois acrescentou outras tantas, e finalmente a viajante aventureira.»Dulce Maria Cardoso «Nesta jornada intimista encontramos uma aventura de escrita pessoalíssima, ao mesmo tempo humana e intelectual.»José Mário Silva, Expresso «Jornalismo no seu melhor. Daquele que exige tempo, tempo para fazer e tempo para digerir.» Pedro Dias de Almeida, Visão «Apresenta a América de uma perspectiva muitíssimo original. O livro merece, a todos os títulos, figurar como uma das melhores e mais originais obras produzidas nos últimos anos em matéria de literatura de viagens.»António Araújo, Público «Este livro é um pedaço de grande literatura que merece ser amplamente lido e receber prémios.»Vasco Rosa, Observador «Um livro que está entre o jornalismo old school feito à séria e uma escrita perfumada e inspirada. Para o leitor, trata-se de um verdadeiro festim.»Pedro Miguel Silva, Deus me livro «Entre os melhores livros de não ficção do ano. A não perder.»Marco Alves, Sábado
El viaje sentimental
by Laurence SterneLos mejores libros jamás escritos. «Soy muy consciente, al mismo tiempo, de que tanto mis viajes como mis observaciones serán de una formulación diametralmente distinta a la de mis precursores.» Un alegre clérigo, llamado Yorick, alter ego del autor, lleva a cabo un recorrido sentimental por Francia e Italia, en el que no son tan importantes los paisajes o las ciudades como las mujeres, las gentes, las aventuras, las sensaciones, el ingenio y el humor. Sterne, uno de los más brillantes fundadores de la novela inglesa, alumbra en este clásico una obra iniciática y seminal, referente ineludible para todos los grandes escritores modernos. La presente edición viene precedida por la introducción de Paul Goring, catedrático en la Universidad Noruega de Ciencia y Tecnología, y reconocido experto en la obra de Laurence Sterne. Asimismo, la delicada mano de Verónica Canales Medina ha vertido este gran clásico inglés a nuestra lengua. Friedrich Nietzsche dijo...«El escritor más libre de todos los tiempos.»
Viajes con un mapa en blanco
by Juan Gabriel VásquezUna colección de ensayos sobre el arte de la novela, por el ganador del Premio IMPAC y el Premio Alfaguara de Novela. Los seres humanos, sostiene este libro, no hemos inventado la novela: es la novela la que nos ha inventado a nosotros. Pero ¿qué nos dan las novelas que no nos puede dar ninguna otra forma narrativa? ¿Qué lugar ocupan en nuestras vidas como individuos y como sociedades? ¿Por qué son, según Vásquez, una manera irremplazable de investigarnos a nosotros mismos, y cómo llevan a cabo sus sortilegios? De Cervantes a Conrad, de Tolstoi a Vargas Llosa, de Proust a Camus, estos ensayos proponen un elogio de ese género proteico y también, entre líneas, un lamento por su situación presente en un mundo que se le ha vuelto hostil. «Un novelista que escribe ensayos, y en particular si esos ensayos hablan del arte de la novela, es como un náufrago que manda coordenadas: quiere decirles a los demás cómo pueden encontrarlo. También, por supuesto, quiere encontrarse a sí mismo; en otras palabras, saber cómo debe leer las novelas que escribe. El ensayo es una exploración, una tentativa, una averiguación, y el novelista escribe para descubrir y trazar los límites de sus conocimientos y la forma de sus certezas. En ese sentido, podría decir uno, es un género confesional.»Juan Gabriel Vásquez Reseñas:«Juan Gabriel Vásquez lidera la generación de escritores que están reinventando la literatura latinoamericana para el siglo XXI.»Jonathan Franzen «Una de las voces más originales de la nueva literatura latinoamericana.»Mario Vargas Llosa «Un escritor superdotado [...]. Uno de los escritores mayores del mundo hispánico.»Thierry Clermont, Le Figaro «Uno de los escritores más grandes del mundo.»Andrea Bajani, La Repubblica «Vásquez es el novelista colombiano más erudito e inventivo de laactualidad.»Amanda Hopkinson, The Independent «Vásquez ha acumulado una obra impresionante, una de las más impactantes que hayan surgido en Latinoamérica en lo que va del siglo.»David Gallagher, The New York Review of Books «Vásquez es uno de los grandes autores de hoy, sin distinción de territorio.»Mathias Enard «Un maestro en el arte de estudiar las grietas y las existencias que toman por el camino equivocado [...]. Un escritor consumado que domina tanto las formas breves como la novela.»Livres Hebdo
Vice Slang
by Tom Dalzell Terry VictorAre you a bit of a chairwarmer? Do you use the wins from a country straight to get scudded on snakebite in a blind tiger? Do you ride the waves on puddle or death drop? Vice Slang gently eases you into the language of gambling, drugs and alcohol, providing you with 3,000 words to establish yourself firmly in the world of corruption and wickedness. All words are illustrated by a reference from a variety of sources to prove their existence in alleys and dives throughout the English speaking world. This entertaining book will give you hours of reading pleasure.
Vico and the Transformation of Rhetoric in Early Modern Europe
by David L. MarshallConsidered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vico's oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. He demonstrates Vico's significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions. Marshall presents Vico's work as an effort to resolve a contradiction. As a professor of rhetoric at the University of Naples, Vico had a deep investment in the explanatory power of classical rhetorical thought, especially that of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Yet as a historian of the failure of Naples as a self-determining political community, he had no illusions about the possibility or worth of democratic and republican systems of government in the post-classical world. As Marshall demonstrates, by jettisoning the assumption that rhetoric only illuminates direct, face-to-face interactions between orator and auditor, Vico reinvented rhetoric for a modern world in which the Greek polis and the Roman res publica are no longer paradigmatic for political thought.
Vico in the Tradition of Rhetoric
by Michael MooneyIf among the many truths of Giambattista Vico's New Science there is one that is deepest, it is the truth that language, mind, and society are but three modes of a common reality. In Vico's term, that reality is the monde civile, the world of man. It is a world of many guises and faces. If reflected in a mirror, those faces would reveal an image of the full array of contemporary arts and sciences, all the disciplines of learning and technique by which, so Vico judged, humanity attains its perfection. Humanity in its perfection, however, is so rare a moment, so delicate and subtle a state, that it is never to be found among the nations of the world -- or is found in so fragile a form that it threatens always to crack and fall to the ground. In the West, a persistent line of thinking that has flourished from time to time holds that language is primary in culture, metaphor a necessity, and jurisprudence our highest achievement. This was the position of Vico, who not only received and cherished the tradition, but looked deeply into it, saw what its principles implied, and so made ready for the great social theorists of the nineteenth century. That is the thesis of this work. After an introductory chapter on Vico himself -- in which his intellectual world and his movements within it are sketched -- the work unfolds in three parts. These parts successively treat rhetoric, pedagogy, and culture, each proceeding from a major Vichian text.
Vicos New Science Ancient Sign
by Jurgen TrabantJürgen Trabant reads the profound insights into human semiosis contained in Vico's 'sematology' as both a spirited rejection of Cartesian philosophy and an early critique of enlightened logocentricism. Sean Ward's translation makes this work available to an English-reading audience for the first time.
Vico's New Science of Ancient Signs: A Study of Sematology
by Jürgen TrabantJürgen Trabant reads the profound insights into human semiosis contained in Vico's 'sematology' as both a spirited rejection of Cartesian philosophy and an early critique of enlightened logocentricism. Sean Ward's translation makes this work available to an English-reading audience for the first time.
The Victim of Fancy: by Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins (Chawton House Library: Women's Novels)
by Daniel CookThe Victim of Fancy was first published in December 1787 and, despite favourable reviews, has not been published since. Cook's new scholarly edition of this forgotten novel will be of paramount importance in allowing new insights into the form of the sentimental novel as it actually existed in the 1780s, and not as it is often perceived.
Victimhood and Vulnerability in 21st Century Fiction (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)
by Jean-Michel Ganteau Susana OnegaEditors Jean-Michel Ganteau and Susana Onega) have assembled a volume which addresses the relationship between trauma and ethics, and moves one step further to engage with vulnerability studies in their relation to literature and literary form. It consists of an introduction and of twelve articles written by specialists from various European countries and includes an interview with US novelist Jayne Anne Philips, conducted by her translator into French, Marc Amfreville, addressing her latest novel, Quiet Dell, through the victimhood-vulnerability prism. The corpus of primary sources on which the volume is based draws on various literary backgrounds in English, from Britain to India, through the USA. The editors draw on material from the ethics of alterity, trauma studies and the ethics of vulnerability in line with the work of moral philosophers like Emmanuel Levinas, as well as with a more recent and challenging tradition of continental thinkers, virtually unknown so far in the English-speaking world, represented by Guillaume Le Blanc, Nathalie Maillard, and Corinne Pelluchon, among others. Yet another related line of thought followed in the volume is that represented by feminist critics like Catriona McKenzie, Wendy Rogers and Susan Dodds.
Victimhood in American Narratives of the War in Vietnam
by Aleksandra MusiałThis book revisits the American canon of novels, memoirs, and films about the war in Vietnam, in order to reassess critically the centrality of the discourse of American victimization in the country’s imagination of the conflict, and to trace the strategies of representation that establish American soldiers and veterans as the most significant victims of the war. By investigating in detail the imagery of the Vietnamese landscape recreated by American authors and directors, the volume explores the proposition that Vietnam has been turned into an American myth, demonstrating that the process resulted in a dehistoricization and mystification of the conflict that obscured its historical and political realities. Against this background, representations of the war’s victims—Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers—are then considered in light of their ideological meanings and uses. Ultimately, the book seeks to demonstrate how, in a relation of power, the question of victimhood can become ideologized, transforming into both a discourse and a strategy of representation—and in doing so, to demythologize something of the "Vietnam" of American cultural narrative.
Victims of the Book: Reading and Masculinity in Fin-de-Siècle France (University of Toronto Romance Series)
by Francois ProulxVictims of the Book uncovers a long-neglected but once widespread subgenre: the fin-de-siècle novel of formation in France. Novels about and geared toward adolescent male readers were imbued with a deep worry over young Frenchmen’s masculinity, as evidenced by titles like Crise de jeunesse (Youth in Crisis, 1897), La Crise virile (Crisis of Virility, 1898), La Vie stérile (A Sterile Life, 1892), and La Mortelle Impuissance (Deadly Impotence, 1903). In this book, François Proulx examines a wide panorama of these novels, many of which have rarely been studied, as well as polemical essays, pedagogical articles, and medical treatises on the perceived threats posed by young Frenchmen’s reading habits. Against this cultural backdrop, he illuminates all that was at stake in representations of the male reader by prominent novelists of the period, including Jules Vallès, Paul Bourget, Maurice Barrès, André Gide, and Marcel Proust. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, social commentators insistently characterized excessive reading as an emasculating illness that afflicted French youth. Fin-de-siècle writers responded to this pathologization of reading with a profusion of novels addressed to young male readers, paradoxically proposing their own novels as potential cures. In the early twentieth century, this corpus was critically revisited by a new generation of writers. Victims of the Book shows how Gide and Proust in particular reworked the fin-de-siècle paradox to subvert cultural norms about literature and masculinity, proposing instead a queer pact between writer and reader.
Victor Dudman’s Grammar and Semantics
by Jean Curthoys Victor H. DudmanVictor Dudman's revolutionary English Grammar brings grammar and logic together by conceiving grammar as 'the necessary preliminary to logic'. The focus, for logicians, is the discussion of 'conditionals'; for grammarians it is the concise and accurate explanation of the infamous English modals.
Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Liability of Liberty
by Bradley Stephens"The arch-Romantic Victor Hugo (1802-85) and the Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-80) are widely perceived to have little in common beyond their canonical status. However, responding to Sartre's often overlooked fascination with Hugo, Bradley Stephens cuts through generic divisions to argue that significant parallels between the two writers have been neglected. Stephens argues that both Hugo and Sartre engage with human beings in distinctly non-ontological terms, thereby anticipating postmodernist approaches to human experience. From different origins but towards similar realisations, they expose the indeterminate human condition as at once release and restriction. These writers insist that liberty is not simply a political ideal, but an existential condition which engages human endeavour as a dynamic rather than definitive mode of being. This incisive new book affirms the ongoing relevance of the two most iconic French writers of the modern period to contemporary discourse on what it means to be free."
Victor Hugo, Romancier de l'Abime: New Studies on Hugo's Novels
by James Hiddleston"This study of Victor Hugo's work aims to uncover the diversity, the thematic and narrative singularity, and the shifting ironies and resistance to interpretative closure of his writing. Novels examined include: ""Notre-Dame de Paris"", ""Les Miserables"", ""Les Travailleurs de la Mer"", ""Quatre vingt-treize"", and ""L'Homme qui Rit"". The 11 essays in the volume bring together various critical approaches from French, British and American scholars, in an attempt to provide a new point of departure and to provoke discussion of Victor Hugo's novels. This publication marks the bicentenary of Hugo's birth in 1802."
Victor Vicuna's Volcano Vacation (Animal Antics A to Z)
by Barbara deRubertisShiver River, Vampire Cave, Stove-Top Volcano, and a mysterious raven named Nevva Moore. . . . Victor Vicuna is in for some very exciting adventures during his family’s vacation at Verna Aardvark’s Volcano Village!
Victoria Welby and the Science of Signs: Significs, Semiotics, Philosophy of Language
by Susan PetrilliVictoria Welby (1837–1912) dedicated her research to the relationship between signs and values. She exchanged ideas with important exponents of the language and sign sciences, such as Charles S. Peirce and Charles S. Ogden. She examined themes she believed crucially important both in the use of signs and in reflection on signs. But Welby's research can also be understood in ideal dialogue with authors she could never have met in real life, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Susanne Langer, and Genevieve Vaughan.Welby contends that signifying cannot be constrained to any one system, type of sign, language, field of discourse, or area of experience. On the contrary, it is ever more developed, enhanced, and rigorous, the more it develops across different fields, disciplines, and areas of experience. For example, to understand meaning, Welby evidences the advantage of translating it into another word even from the same language or resorting to metaphor to express what would otherwise be difficult to conceive.Welby aims for full awareness of the expressive potential of signifying resources. Her reflections make an important contribution to problems connected with communication, expression, interpretation, translation, and creativity.
The Victorian Age in Literature
by G. K. Chesterton"I was born a Victorian; and sympathise not a little with the serious Victorian Spirit." In this engaging and extremely personal account G K Chesterton expounds his views on Victorian literature. Many of his opinions reflect the conventions of the age; however of the Victorian novel he refreshingly comments "it is an art in which women are quite beyond controversy". Equally uncompromising about poets and poetry he does not hesitate to call Tennyson "a provincial Virgil". This book is an important landmark in our understanding of an age which produced some of Britain's most widely enjoyed literature.