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“A perfect blend of cutting-edge science and compelling storytelling.”—Bill Bryson A revolutionary new vision of human biology and the scientific breakthroughs that will transform our lives Imagine knowing years in advance whether you are likely to get cancer or having a personalized understanding of your individual genes, organs, and cells. Imagine being able to monitor your body's well-being, or have a diet tailored to your microbiome. The Secret Body reveals how these and other stunning breakthroughs and technologies are transforming our understanding of how the human body works, what it is capable of, how to protect it from disease, and how we might manipulate it in the future. Tak...
As one of the most prolific and influential scholars in the field, Thomas D. Hill has made an indelible mark on the study of Old English literature. In celebration of his distinguished career, the editors of Source of Wisdom have assembled a wide-ranging collection of nineteen original essays on Old English poetry and prose as well as early medieval Latin, touching upon many of Hill's specific research interests. Among the topics examined in this volume are the Christian-Latin sources of Old English texts, including religious and 'sapiential' poetry, and prose translations of Latin writings. Old English poems such as Beowulf, The Dream of the Rood, and The Wife's Lament are treated, throughout, to thematic, textual, stylistic, lexical, and source analysis. Prose writers of the period such as King Alfred and Wærferth, as well as medieval Latin writers such as Bede and Pseudo-Methodius are also discussed. As an added feature, the volume includes a bibliography of publications by Thomas D. Hill. Source of Wisdom is, ultimately, a contribution to the understanding of medieval English literature and the textual traditions that contributed to its development.
Music, that fundamental form of human expression, is one of the most powerful cultural continuities fostered by enslaved Africans and their descendants throughout the Americas. The roots of so much of the music beloved around the world today are drawn directly from the men and women carried across the Atlantic in chains, from the west coast of Africa to the shores of the so-called New World. This important new book bridges African diaspora studies, music studies, and transatlantic and colonial American literature to trace the lineage of African and African diasporic musical life in the early modern period. Mary Caton Lingold meticulously analyzes surviving sources, especially European travelogues, to recover the lives of African performers, the sounds they created, and the meaning their musical creations held in Africa and later for enslaved communities in the Caribbean and throughout the plantation Americas. The book provides a rich history of early African sound and a revelatory analysis of the many ways that music shaped enslavement and colonization in the Americas.
Views the Victorian novel through the prism of literary imitations that it inspired.
An authoritative edition of Oscar Wilde’s critical writings shows how the renowned dramatist and novelist also transformed the art of commentary. Though he is primarily acclaimed today for his drama and fiction, Oscar Wilde was also one of the greatest critics of his generation. Annotated and introduced by Wilde scholar Nicholas Frankel, this unique collection reveals Wilde as a writer who transformed criticism, giving the genre new purpose, injecting it with style and wit, and reorienting it toward the kinds of social concerns that still occupy our most engaging cultural commentators. “Criticism is itself an art,” Wilde wrote, and The Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde demonstrates this...
From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers—from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have led such colourful lives or matched her influence or capacity for reinvention in poetry, drama, fiction, and film. In The Wife of Bath, Marion Turner tells the fascinating story of where Chaucer’s favourite character came from, how she related to real medieval women, and w...
Popular romance was one of the most wide-spread forms of literature in the Middle Ages, yet despite its cultural centrality, and its fundamental importance for later literary developments, the genre has defied precise definition, its subject matter ranging from tales of chivalric adventure, to saintly women, and monsters that become human. The essays in this collection provide contexts, definitions, and explanations for the genre, particularly in an English context. Topics covered include genre and literary classification; race and ethnicity; gender; orality and performance; the romance and young readers; metre and form; printing culture; and reception.
The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain vereint erstmals wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse zu Multilingualität und Interkulturalität im mittelalterlichen Britannien und bietet mehr als 600 fundierte Einträge zu Schlüsselpersonen, Zusammenhängen und Einflüssen in der Literatur vom fünften bis sechzehnten Jahrhundert. - Einzigartiger multilingualer, interkultureller Ansatz und die neuesten wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse. Das gesamte Mittelalter und die Bandbreite literarischer Sprachen werden abgedeckt. - Über 600 fundierte, verständliche Einträge zu Schlüsselpersonen, Texten, kritischen Debatten, Methoden, kulturellen Zusammenhängen sowie verwandte Terminologie. - Repräs...
People in the Middle Ages and the early modern age more often suffered from imprisonment and enslavement than we might have assumed. Incarceration and Slavery in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age approaches these topics from a wide variety of perspectives and demonstrates collectively the great relevance of the issues involved. Both incarceration and slavery were (and continue to be) most painful experiences, and no one was guaranteed exemption from it. High-ranking nobles and royalties were often the victims of imprisonment and, at times, had to wait many years until their ransom was paid. Similarly, slavery existed throughout Christian Europe and in the Arab world. However, while imprisonment occasionally proved to be the catalyst for major writings and creativity, slaves in the Ottoman empire and in Egypt succeeded in rising to the highest position in society (Janissaries, Mamluks, and others).
The discovery of green fluorescent protein revolutionized molecular biology, transforming our study of everything from the AIDS virus to the workings of the brain.