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Marco Polo almost the first European man to reach the wonderful world of East Asia. The Travels of Marco Polo, is a 13th-century travelogue written down by Rustichello da Pisa from stories told by Marco Polo when they where emprisoned together in Genoa, describing Polo's travels through Asia, Persia, China, and Indonesia between 1276 and 1291 and his experiences became at the court of the Mongol leader Kublai Khan.
Discusses the differences between "open" and "closed" texts, or, texts that actively involve the reader and texts that evoke a limited, predetermined response from the reader. -- Back cover.
Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctorate--University College, London, 2001).
Pellucid Paper is an interdisciplinary study of the materiality of Early Modern poetry and its relation to political power, memory and subject constitution. Informed by German Media theory and specifically the more recent developments of Cultural Techniques, Wickberg offers a fresh and imaginative take on Early Modern culture.
Examining the social, medical and cultural history of male homosexuality in Spain, this book looks at it from the time homosexuality came to be an issue of medical, legal and cultural concern. Research into homosexuality in Spain is in its infancy. The last ten or fifteen years have seen a proliferation of studies on gender in Spain but much of this work has concentrated on women's history, literature and femininity. In contrast to existing research which concentrates on literature and literary figures, "Los Invisibles" focuses on the change in cultural representation of same-sex activity of through medicalisation, social and political anxieties about race and the late emergence of homosexual sub-cultures in the last quarter of the twentieth century. As such, this book constitutes an analysis of discourses and ideas from a social history and medical history position. Much of the research for the book was supported by a grant from the Wellcome Trust to research the medicalisation of homosexuality in Spain.
Radwa Ashour skillfully weaves a history of Granadan rule and an Arabic world into a novel that evokes cultural loss and the disappearance of a vanquished population. The novel follows the family of Abu Jaafar the bookbinder—his wife, widowed daughter-in-law, her two children, and his two apprentices—as they witness Christopher Columbus and his entourage in a triumphant parade featuring exotic plants, animals, human captives from the New World. Embedded in the narrative is the preparation for the marriage of Saad, one of the apprentices, and Saleema, Abu Jaafar's granddaughter—which is elegantly revealed in a number of parallel scenes. As the new rulers of Granada confiscate books and officials burn the collected volumes, Abu Jaafur quietly moves his rich library out of town. Persecuted Muslims fight to form an independent government, but increasing economic and cultural pressures on the Arabs of Spain and Christian rulers culminate in forcing Christian conversions and Muslim uprisings. A tale that is both vigorous and heartbreaking, this novel will appeal to general readers of Spanish and Arabic literature as well as anyone interested in Christian-Muslim relations.
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This study traces Borges' career as a poet from his earliest poetic endeavors before the 1923 publication of Fervor de Buenos Aires through the middle of the 1960's. Paul Cheselka considers Borges' better-known poetry collections, such as Fervor de Buenos Aires, Luna de enfrente, and Cuaderno San Martín; and he shows the often-neglected 1930-1960 period to be an important phase in the evolution of Borges' poetry. The poems are studied chronologically with particular emphasis on the relation of their themes to the poet's life and ideas. Cheselka's contribution is that of providing a clearer delineation of borgesian poetics; the poems themselves are shown to be the evidence and very substance of the poets's definitions.