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Walden and Resistance to Civil Government
by Henry D. ThoreauFor this second edition, the volume previously edited by the late Owen Thomas has been updated in every respect. A few changes have been made to the Walden text, based on comparisons with prior manuscript versions and with Thoreau's corrected page proofs and additions to his own copy of the book. These and all other emendations of the 1854 text of Walden are summarized in a table of textual variants. The original placement of Thoreau's map of Walden Pond and the title of his famous essay have been restored, and annotations for both texts have been added or revised as necessary. This second edition features an expanded selection of passages from Thoreau's Journal, composed over the entire nine-year period during which he wrote, rethought, and extensively revised Walden and in which the Journal itself became a distinct imaginative work.
Walden x 40: Essays on Thoreau
by Robert B. RayProvocative and illuminating essays on Thoreau&’s masterwork, shedding new light on its enduring inspiration and philosophical depth. In 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved from his parents&’ house in Concord, Massachusetts, to a one-room cabin he built himself on the land of his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He described his time there, just over two years, as an experiment in &“living deliberately.&” His daily journal entries became the source material for Walden, a masterful meditation on the virtues of simplicity, self-sufficiency, and man&’s relationship to nature. In Walden x 40, Robert B. Ray adopts Thoreau&’s compositional method to explore some of the questions posed in Walden. Drawing connections to the works of poets and philosophers from Wordsworth to Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, and Breton, Ray derives the inspiration for his 40 brief essays by exploring the pages of Walden in the same way Thoreau explored his own life—deliberately.
Walden's Shore
by Robert M. Thorson"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward," Thoreau invites his readers in "Walden," "till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call "reality. "" "Waldens Shore" explores Thoreaus understanding of that hard reality, not as metaphor but as physical science. Robert M. Thorson is interested in Thoreau the rock and mineral collector, interpreter of landscapes, and field scientist whose compass and measuring stick were as important to him as his plant press. At "Walden"s climax, Thoreau asks us to imagine a "living earth" upon which all animal and plant life is parasitic. This book examines Thoreaus understanding of the geodynamics of that living earth, and how his understanding informed the writing of "Walden. " The story unfolds against the ferment of natural science in the nineteenth century, as Natural Theology gave way to modern secular science. That era saw one of the great blunders in the history of American science--the rejection of glacial theory. Thorson demonstrates just how close Thoreau came to discovering a "theory of everything" that could have explained most of the landscape he saw from the doorway of his cabin at Walden. At pivotal moments in his career, Thoreau encountered the work of the geologist Charles Lyell and that of his protege Charles Darwin. Thorson concludes that the inevitable path of Thoreaus thought was descendental, not transcendental, as he worked his way downward through the complexity of life to its inorganic origin, the living rock.
Wales and the Medieval Colonial Imagination
by Michael A. FaletraFocusing on works by some of the major literary figures of the period, Faletra argues that the legendary history of Britain that flourished in medieval chronicles and Arthurian romances traces its origins to twelfth-century Anglo-Norman colonial interest in Wales and the Welsh.
Walk Two Moons (SparkNotes Literature Guide Series)
by SparkNotesWalk Two Moons (SparkNotes Literature Guide) by Sharon Creech Making the reading experience fun! Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster. Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provides: *Chapter-by-chapter analysis *Explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols *A review quiz and essay topicsLively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers
Walk the Barrio: The Streets of Twenty-First-Century Transnational Latinx Literature (Cultural Frames, Framing Culture)
by Cristina RodriguezImmigrant communities evince particular and deep relationship to place. Building on this self-evident premise, Walk the Barrio adds the less obvious claim that to write about place you must experience place. Thus, in this book about immigrants, writing, and place, Cristina Rodriguez walks neighborhood streets, talks to immigrants, interviews authors, and puts herself physically in the spaces that she seeks to understand.The word barrio first entered the English lexicon in 1833 and has since become a commonplace not only of American speech but of our literary imagination. Indeed, what draws Rodriguez to the barrios of Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and others is the work of literature that was fueled and inspired by those neighborhoods. Walk the Barrio explores the ways in which authors William Archila, Richard Blanco, Angie Cruz, Junot Díaz, Salvador Plascencia, Héctor Tobar, and Helena María Viramontes use their U.S. hometowns as both setting and stylistic inspiration.Asking how these writers innovate upon or break the rules of genre to render in words an embodied experience of the barrio, Rodriguez considers, for example, how the spatial map of New Brunswick impacts the mobility of Díaz’s female characters, or how graffiti influences the aesthetics of Viramontes’s novels. By mapping each text’s fictional setting upon the actual spaces it references in what she calls "barriographies," Rodriguez reveals connections between place, narrative form, and migrancy.This first-person, interdisciplinary approach presents an innovative model for literary studies as it sheds important light on the ways in which transnationalism transforms the culture of each Latinx barrio, effecting shifts in gender roles, the construction of the family, definitions of social normativity, and racial, ethnic, national, and linguistic identifications.
Walker Percy Remembered
by David Horace HarwellWalker Percy (1916-1990), the reclusive southern author most famous for his 1961 novel The Moviegoer, spent much of his adult life in Covington, Louisiana. In the spirit of traditional southern storytelling, this biography of Percy takes its shape from candid interviews with his family, close friends, and acquaintances. In thirteen interviews, we get to know Percy through his lifelong friend Shelby Foote, Percy's brothers LeRoy and Phin, his former priest, his housekeeper, and former teachers, among others--all in their own words. Over the course of the interviews, readers learn intimate details of Percy's writing process; his interaction with community members of different ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds; and his commitment to civil rights issues. What emerges is a multidimensional portrait of Percy as a man, a friend, and a family member.
Walker Percy and the Crisis of Meaning: Communication in the Ruins
by Justin N. BonannoIn this book, Justin N. Bonanno builds off of the recent philosophical work on Walker Percy’s writings. While it is valuable to appreciate Percy as a novelist, Bonanno approaches Percy from the perspective of Continental philosophy and the rhetorical tradition. Unpacking the works of several key authors that influenced Percy (e.g. Sartre and Heidegger), Bonanno offers a fresh philosophical account of Percy's ideas concerning the relationship between symbols and existence. In particular, he focuses on how Percy’s ideas emerge from the thought of Ernst Cassirer, Susanne Langer, Jacques Maritain, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, Martin Heidegger, Viktor Shklovsky, Søren Kierkegaard, and St. Thomas Aquinas.
Walker Percy's The Moviegoer at Fifty: New Takes on an Iconic American Novel
by Jennifer Levasseur Mary A. Mccay Jay TolsonMore than fifty years after its publication, Walker Percy's National Book Award Winner, The Moviegoer, still confronts, comforts, and enlightens generations of readers. This collection of twelve new essays, edited and introduced by Jennifer Levasseur and Mary A. McCay, emphasize the evolving significance of this seminal, New Orleans novel. Authors' consider the text with diverse perspectives, drawing from philosophy, theology, disability theory, contemporary music and literature, social media, and film studies. Jay Tolson opens the volume with reflections on rereading the novel on a Kindle decades after writing his important biography of Percy. H. Collin Messer, Montserrat Gins, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and Brian Jobe follow with illuminating essays analyzing Percy's influences, from St. Augustine and Cervantes to Heidegger and Dostoevsky. Jonathan Potter and Read Mercer Schuchardt, Mary A. McCay, Matthew Luter, and Dorian Speed delve into the novel's significance to cinema, including an exhaustive guide to its film references, a meditation on Binx Bolling as a director of his existence, and the semiotics of celebrity. Brent Walter Cline and Robert Bolton, Michael Kobre, and L. Lamar Nisly present a roadmap for Bolling's inward journey, exploring a variety of elements from the role of the broken body to the spiritual connection to Bruce Springsteen lyrics. Walker Percy's The Moviegoer at Fifty is the first critical work devoted solely to the author's debut novel. Coinciding with the centenary of Percy's birth, this collection invites both new and veteran readers to enjoy The Moviegoer with fresh perspectives that underscore its lasting relevance.
Walker Percy, Philosopher
by Leslie MarshThough Walker Percy is best known as a novelist, he was first and foremost a philosopher. This collection offers a sustained examination of key aspects to his more technical philosophy (primarily semiotics and the philosophy of language) as well as some of his lesser known philosophical interests, including the philosophy of place and dislocation. Contributors expound upon Percy’s multifaceted philosophy, an invitation to literature and theology scholars as well as to philosophers who may not be familiar with the philosophical underpinnings of his work.
Walker's Rhyming Dictionary of the English Language
by J. WalkerFirst published in 1983.This is a long-established standard work of reference for poets and rhymesters.
Walking English: A Journey in Search of Language
by David CrystalFrom an acclaimed linguist, &“part travelogue, part memoir, and part meditation on the intellectual and emotional underpinnings of language. . . . Priceless.&” (Booklist) In this discursive jaunt through the groves and thickets of the English language, David Crystal creates an entertaining narrative account of his encounters with the language and its speakers. Woven from personal reflections, historical allusions, and observations of travelers, this fascinating journey through the language we use every day will have readers thinking twice about each word they speak. Starting in Wales and moving from England to San Francisco by way of, yes, Poland, Crystal encounters numerous linguistic side roads that he cannot resist exploring, from pubs to trains to Tolkien. Walking English is a captivating exploration of language by &“one of England&’s greatest living language commentators.&” (The New Statesman) &“In a conversational style that includes plenty of quirky facts, Crystal captures the exploratory, seductive, teasing, quirky, tantalizing nature of language study, and in doing so illuminates the fascinating world of words in which we live.&” —Publishers Weekly &“An informative, transformative trip into the mysterious, mutating, magical thicket of English.&” (Kirkus Reviews) &“Like passing the afternoon with a knowledgeable uncle.&” —The Wall Street Journal &“The Dr. Johnson of our age.&” —The Sunday Herald &“The book reads like a donnish Bill Bryson, a Bryson possessed with a maniacal passion for the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language! . . . [A] compelling guide.&” —Independent &“Crystal proves an entertaining companion! It is pleasant to ramble with him along the byways of language.&” —The Tablet
Walking Harlem: The Ultimate Guide to the Cultural Capital of Black America
by Karen TabornWith its rich cultural history and many landmark buildings, Harlem is not just one of New York’s most distinctive neighborhoods; it’s also one of the most walkable. This illustrated guide takes readers on five separate walking tours of Harlem, covering ninety-one different historical sites. Alongside major tourist destinations like the Apollo Theater and the Abyssinian Baptist Church, longtime Harlem resident Karen Taborn includes little-known local secrets like Jazz Age speakeasies, literati, political and arts community locales. Drawing from rare historical archives, she also provides plenty of interesting background information on each location. This guide was designed with the needs of walkers in mind. Each tour consists of eight to twenty-nine nearby sites, and at the start of each section, readers will find detailed maps of the tour sites, as well as an estimated time for each walk. In case individuals would like to take a more leisurely tour, it provides recommendations for restaurants and cafes where they can stop along the way. Walking Harlem gives readers all the tools they need to thoroughly explore over a century’s worth of this vital neighborhood’s cultural, political, religious, and artistic heritage. With its informative text and nearly seventy stunning photographs, this is the most comprehensive, engaging, and educational walking tour guidebook on one of New York’s historic neighborhoods.
Walking Light: Memoirs and Essays on Poetry (American Readers Series)
by Stephen DunnCommitted to exploring the role of poetry and poets in our culture, Stephen Dunn provides new, expanded versions of the essays originally published by W. W. Norton in 1993, now out of print. In Walking Light, Dunn discusses the relationship between art and sport, the role of imagination in writing poetry, and the necessity for surprise and discovery when writing a poem. Humorous, intelligent and accessible, Walking Light is a book that will appeal to writers, readers, and teachers of poetry.Stephen Dunn is the author of eleven collection of poetry. He teaches writing and literature at the Richard Stockton College in Pomona, New Jersey, and lives in Port Republic, New Jersey.
Walking Stars: Stories of Magic and Power
by Victor VillaseñorThese are the stories of Victor Villaseñor's childhood. Magical, yet true, they are fables of endurance, defeat and triumph, spirituality, and, always, of love. Handed down through the generations, the Villaseñor's have been telling these family tales for years. Now, Victor shares them with his unmistakable storyteller style, complete with beautiful imagery and timeless significance. Set against the backdrop of the Mexican revolution and his family's migration to the United States, these stories feature a cast of unforgettable characters who have in common their perseverance and courage. They encounter the supernatural, escape persecution by rebel soldiers, endure hunger, thirst and physical stress, and ultimately, transcend their circumstances to achieve their dreams. They are indeed walking stars. Victor Villaseñor works his magic once again with these extraordinary stories. Following each story is an Author's Note, adding context and depth.
Walking Virginia Woolf’s London
by Lisbeth LarssonThis innovative volume employs theoretical tools from the field of literary geography to explore Virginia Woolf's writing and the ways in which she constructs her human subjects. It follows the routes of characters from The Voyage, Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and more as they walk around London, demonstrating how Woolf constructs the characters in her stories in a very politically conscious way. As Larsson argues, none of Woolf's characters are able to walk just anywhere, at any time in history, or at any time of the day. Time, place, gender, and class form the conditions of life that the characters must accept or challenge. Featuring an array of detailed maps, Walking Virginia Woolf's London: An Investigation in Literary Geography brings a fascinating new perspective to Virginia Woolf's work. It is essential reading for scholars of modernist literature or geocriticism.
Walking in Roman Culture
by Timothy M. O'SullivanWalking served as an occasion for the display of power and status in ancient Rome, where great men paraded with their entourages through city streets and elite villa owners strolled with friends in private colonnades and gardens. In this first book-length treatment of the culture of walking in ancient Rome, Timothy O'Sullivan explores the careful attention which Romans paid to the way they moved through their society. He employs a wide range of literary, artistic and architectural evidence to reveal the crucial role that walking played in the performance of social status, the discourse of the body and the representation of space. By examining how Roman authors depict walking, this book sheds new light on the Romans themselves - not only how they perceived themselves and their experience of the world, but also how they drew distinctions between work and play, mind and body, and Republic and Empire.
Walking through Elysium: Vergil’s Underworld and the Poetics of Tradition (Phoenix Supplementary Volumes)
Walking through Elysium stresses the subtle and intricate ways writers across time and space wove Vergil’s underworld in Aeneid 6 into their works. These allusions operate on many levels, from the literary and political to the religious and spiritual. Aeneid 6 reshaped prior philosophical, religious, and poetic traditions of underworld descents, while offering a universalizing account of the spiritual that could accommodate prior as well as emerging religious and philosophical systems. Vergil’s underworld became an archetype, a model flexible enough to be employed across genres, and periods, and among differing cultural and religious contexts. The essays in this volume speak to Vergil’s incorporation of and influence on literary representations of underworlds, souls, afterlives, prophecies, journeys, and spaces, from sacred and profane to wild and civilized, tracing the impact of Vergil’s underworld on authors such as Ovid, Seneca, Statius, Augustine, and Shelley, from Pagan and Christian traditions through Romantic and Spiritualist readings. Walking through Elysium asserts the deep and lasting influence of Vergil’s underworld from the moment of its publication to the present day.
Walks with Walser
by Carl Seelig Anne PostenA unique and personal portrait of the beloved, legendary Swiss writer, finally in English After a nervous breakdown in 1929, Robert Walser spent the remaining twenty-seven years of his life in mental asylums, closed off from the rest of the world in almost complete anonymity. While at the Herisau sanitarium, instead of writing, Walser practiced another favorite activity: walking. Starting in 1936, Carl Seelig, Walser’s friend and literary executor, visited and accompanied him on these walks, meticulously recording their conversations. As they strolled, Walser told stories, shared his daily experiences of the sanatorium, and expressed his opinions about books and art, writing and history. When Seelig asked why he no longer wrote, Walser famously replied: “I’m not here to write, I’m here to be mad.” Filled with lively anecdotes and details, Walks with Walser offers the fullest available account of this wonderful writer’s inner and outer life.
Wall, Watchtower, and Pencil Stub: Writing During World War II
by John R. CarpenterHow World War II became central in our culture.Even as World War II raged on, contemporary writers were riveted by its every twist and turn. One of the war's most fascinating features was that it was subject to constant change, surprises, and fate reversal. It ensured that wartime writers, who did not yet know of its outcome, adopted points of view that were entirely spontaneous, rather than based on historical hindsight.This remarkable book presents the war in its entirety, with all its force, suspense, and drama. With exceptional clarity it shows how the extreme events of war challenged writers, inspired their art, and in turn produced a modern legacy of literature.Wall, Watchtower, and Pencil Stub makes a convincing case for the permanent centrality of World War II in our present-day culture, literature, and history. The war was not separate from the cultural trends that preceded it before 1939, or the postwar world after 1945. In this extraordinary book, many of the major writers of the time-Samuel Beckett, Richard Hillary, Norman Mailer, Pearl Buck, James Jones, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others-are put in an entirely new context.
Wallace Stegner's Unsettled Country: Ruin, Realism, and Possibility in the American West
by Michael J. Lansing Mark Fiege Leisl Carr ChildersWallace Stegner is an iconic western writer. His works of fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Angle of Repose and Big Rock Candy Mountain, as well as his nonfiction books and essays introduced the beauty and character of the American West to thousands of readers. Wallace Stegner&’s Unsettled Country assesses his life, work, and legacy in light of contemporary issues and crises. Along with Stegner&’s achievements, the contributors show how his failures offer equally crucial ways to assess the past, present, and future of the region. Drawing from history, literature, philosophy, law, geography, and park management, the contributors consider Stegner&’s racial liberalism and regional vision, his gendered view of the world, his understandings of conservation and the environment, his personal experience of economic collapse and poverty, his yearning for community, and his abiding attachment to the West. Wallace Stegner&’s Unsettled Country is an even-handed reclamation of Stegner&’s enduring relevance to anyone concerned about the American West&’s uncertain future.
Wallace Stevens among Others
by David R. JarrawayIn Wallace Stevens among Others David Jarraway explores the extraordinary achievement of Wallace Stevens, but in contexts that are not usually thought about in connection with Stevens's work - gay literature, contemporary fiction, Hollywood film, and avant-garde architecture, among others. <P><P> By viewing the poet among these "other" contexts, Jarraway considers the nature of self-reflection and pays special attention to the discrediting of self-presence as the principle of identity in American writing - a theme that reflects American authors' abiding concern for subjectivities that engage the world from spaces of distance and difference. By returning to the work of Stevens, Jarraway seeks to refurbish this preoccupation by linking it to the literary theory of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, whose work applies to American writers from Melville and Whitman to Fitzgerald and Cummings. Jarraway forges the link between Deleuze and Stevens by drawing out the female subjectivity found in each writer's work to rethink the more static masculinist premises of being. <P> Informed by a deep knowledge of and fluency with the work of Stevens and Deleuze, Jarraway uses these writers as a means of entry into American literature and culture, Wallace Stevens among Others is a sophisticated analysis that will open new directions for future scholarship.
Wallace Stevens among Others: Diva-Dames, Deleuze, and American Culture
by David R. JarrawayIn Wallace Stevens among Others, David Jarraway explores the extraordinary achievement of Wallace Stevens, but in contexts that are not usually thought about in connection with Stevens's work - gay literature, contemporary fiction, Hollywood film, and avant-garde architecture, among others. By viewing the poet among these "other" contexts, Jarraway considers the nature of self-reflection and pays special attention to the discrediting of self-presence as the principle of identity in American writing - a theme that reflects American authors’ abiding concern for subjectivities that engage the world from spaces of distance and difference. By returning to the work of Stevens, Jarraway seeks to refurbish this preoccupation by linking it to the literary theory of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, whose work applies to American writers from Melville and Whitman to Fitzgerald and Cummings. Jarraway forges the link between Deleuze and Stevens by drawing out the female subjectivity found in each writer’s work to rethink the more static masculinist premises of being. Informed by a deep knowledge of and fluency with the work of Stevens and Deleuze, Jarraway uses these writers as a means of entry into American literature and culture, Wallace Stevens among Others is a sophisticated analysis that will open new directions for future scholarship.
Wallace Stevens and Martin Heidegger: Poetry as Appropriative Proximity (American Literature Readings in the 21st Century)
by Ian TanThis book is a unique contribution to scholarship of the poetics of Wallace Stevens, offering an analysis of the entire oeuvre of Stevens’s poetry using the philosophical framework of Martin Heidegger. Marking the first book-length engagement with a philosophical reading of Stevens, it uses Heidegger’s theories as a framework through which Stevens’s poetry can be read and shows how philosophy and literature can enter into a productive dialogue. It also makes a case for a Heideggerian reading of poetry, exploring his later philosophy with respect to his writing on art, language, and poetry. Taking Stevens’s repeated emphasis on the terms “being”, “consciousness”, “reality” and “truth” as its starting point, the book provides a new reading of Stevens with a philosopher who aligns poetic insight with a reconceptualization of the metaphysical significance of these concepts. It pursues the link between philosophy, American poetry as reflected through Stevens, and modernist poetics, looking from Stevens’s modernist techniques to broader European philosophical movements of the twentieth century.