Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Fantasy Literature and Christianity
The debate surrounding the Christian aspects of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter has revealed not only the prominence of religious themes in fantasy fiction, but also readers' concerns over portrayals of religion in fantasy. Yet while analyses of these works fill many volumes, other fantasy series have received much less attention. This critical study explores the fantastic religions and religious themes in American and Canadian works by Stephen R. Donaldson (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant), Guy Gavriel Kay (Fionavar Tapestry), Celia S. Friedman (Coldfire Trilogy), and Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn). References to biblical tradition and Christian teachings reveal these writers' overall approach to Christianity and the relationship between Christianity and the fantasy genre.
The Whedonverse Catalog
Director, producer and screenwriter Joss Whedon is a creative force in film, television, comic books and a host of other media. This book provides an authoritative survey of all of Whedon's work, ranging from his earliest scriptwriting on Roseanne, through his many movie and TV undertakings--Toy Story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, Dr. Horrible, The Cabin in the Woods, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.--to his forays into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The book covers both the original texts of the Whedonverse and the many secondary works focusing on Whedon's projects, including about 2000 books, essays, articles, documentaries and dissertations.
Space and Place in Childrens Literature, 1789 to the Present
Focusing on questions of space and locale in children’s literature, this collection explores how metaphorical and physical space can create landscapes of power, knowledge, and identity in texts from the early nineteenth century to the present. The collection is comprised of four sections that take up the space between children and adults, the representation of 'real world' places, fantasy travel and locales, and the physical space of the children’s book-as-object. In their essays, the contributors analyze works from a range of sources and traditions by authors such as Sylvia Plath, Maria Edgeworth, Gloria Anzaldúa, Jenny Robson, C.S. Lewis, Elizabeth Knox, and Claude Ponti. While maintaining a focus on how location and spatiality aid in defining the child’s relationship to the world, the essays also address themes of borders, displacement, diaspora, exile, fantasy, gender, history, home-leaving and homecoming, hybridity, mapping, and metatextuality. With an epilogue by Philip Pullman in which he discusses his own relationship to image and locale, this collection is also a valuable resource for understanding the work of this celebrated author of children’s literature.
Diversity and Homogeneity
Diversity and Homogeneity explores current issues related to the nation, ethnicity and gender in literature, film, media and theatrical performance in both the UK and the USA. Employing a broad research framework, it investigates the problematics of migration, nomadism, nationhood, citizenship, patriotism, terrorism, totalitarianism, social and racial equality, as well as masculinity and femininity in modern multicultural societies. Keenly attuned to questions of alterity, social and cultural fluidity, and heterogeneous forms of identity, yet also sensitive to contemporary unifying tendencies informing an increasingly globalized world, the volume’s contributions critically interrogate and challenge the traditional notions attached to the three overarching categories of the book’s title.
The Epistemological Perspective of the Pearl-Poet
Original and engaging, this study presents the four anonymous poems found in the Cotton Nero MS - Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - as a composite text with a continuous narrative. While it is widely accepted that the poems attributed to the Pearl-Poet ought to be read together, this book demonstrates that instead of being analyzed as four distinct, though interconnected, textual entities, they ought to be studied as a single literary unit that produces meaning through its own intricate internal structure. Piotr Spyra defines the epistemological thought of Saint Augustine as an interpretive key which, when applied to the composite text of the manuscript, reveals a fabric of thematic continuity. This book ultimately provides the reader with a clear sense of the poet's perspective on the nature of human knowledge as well as its moral implications and with a deeper understanding of how the poems bring the theological and philosophical problems of the Middle Ages to bear on the individual human experience.
The Surplus of Culture
This multifaceted volume presents the elusive surplus of culture in the spotlight of theory and academic practice. Despite its overtly economic implications, the concept alludes to the added value of sense, common sense and nonsense which is represented as languages of irony, irrationality and absurdity potentially subverting traditional and mainstream “regimes” of culture. Consequently, the “moment of surplus” is inherent in critical interpretation in which supposedly well-entrenched notions suddenly reveal their implicitly shattering and subversive nature. The surplus of culture dwells at the risky intersection of untamed interpretation and tradition. It is the space of the “third” in which literary canons are re-visited, language reveals its hidden political agendas, the Orient reclaims its own cognitive perspective and established structures of cognition are questioned in the tragic-comic gesture of insight. The volume is a must for scholars and researchers in the fields of cultural studies, literature and arts as well as literary theory.
Images of the City
Images of the City takes the reader on a fascinating journey through urban landscapes across centuries, literary periods, media, genres and borders. 27 essays gathered from Poland, UK, Romania, Italy, Hungary, and Portugal by researchers representing different academic environments and fields of speciality offer a truly interdisciplinary perspective on the issue of understanding, representing, and interpreting the city. In this respect, the volume complements other anthologies which discuss urban space without limiting itself to one unique theoretical perspective. Its neat division into chronological and thematic sections makes for easy yet informative and inclusive reading, encouraging cross-referencing and challenging interests and tastes of a wide array of readers. Images of the City provides essential reading for cityphiles everywhere.
Simple Forms
Simple Forms is a study of popular or folk literature in the medieval period. Focusing both on the vast body of oral literature that lies behind the written texts which have survived from the medieval period and on the popular literature provided by literate authors for audiences of hearers or readers with varying degrees of literacy, Douglas Gray leads new readers to a productively complicated understanding of the relationship between medieval popular culture and the culture of the learned. He argues that medieval society was stratified, in what seems to us a rigid way, but that culturally it was more flexible. Literary topics, themes, and forms moved; there was much borrowing, and a constant interaction. Popular tales, motifs, and ideas passed into learned or courtly works; learned forms and attitudes made their way in into popular culture. All in all this seems to have been a fruitful symbiosis. The book's twelve chapters are principally organised genre, covering epics, ballads, popular romances, folktales, the German sage, legends, animal tales and fables, proverbs, riddles, satires, songs, and drama.
Terry Pratchett's Narrative Worlds
This book highlights the multi-dimensionality of the work of British fantasy writer and Discworld creator Terry Pratchett. Taking into account content, political commentary, and literary technique, it explores the impact of Pratchett's work on fantasy writing and genre conventions.With chapters on gender, multiculturalism, secularism, education, and relativism, Section One focuses on different characters’ situatedness within Pratchett’s novels and what this may tell us about the direction of his social, religious and political criticism. Section Two discusses the aesthetic form that this criticism takes, and analyses the post- and meta-modern aspects of Pratchett’s writing, his use of humour, and genre adaptations and deconstructions. This is the ideal collection for any literary and cultural studies scholar, researcher or student interested in fantasy and popular culture in general, and in Terry Pratchett in particular.
Premodern History and Art through the Prism of Gender in East-Central Europe
Premodern History and Art through the Prism of Gender in East-Central Europe is a representative collection of current Czech research in premodern history and art history, using gender as a tool of analysis. The common denominators of the texts collected in this volume are the art history of the premodern period, gender perspectives, and, to a certain degree, the Czech milieu. The book is divided into four parts, based on area of interest, time frame, and research perspective. The first part sheds light on the state of research in the field of women's history—along with the implementation of the concept of gender—and highlights a certain paradigmatic conservatism of Czech art historiography. The second gathers contributions that analyze visual sources of Czech origin. The third includes texts that analyze gender issues on the level of literary representation. The final part presents two case studies that involve analysis of the premodern West European source base. Rywiková and Malaníková present this volume as an innovative way to introduce this specific segment of Central European art history to a broader audience in global academia.
