Insistent Images presents a number of new departures dealing with iconicity on the conceptual and the structural levels. On the level of structure, the interface between different aspects of iconicity, lexical meaning and grammar is discussed in reference to both spoken and signed languages. Novel approaches to aural iconicity investigate a wide range of phenomena from phonological iconicity to the role of iconic features in discourse, in the nineteenth century practice of reading aloud, in the almost magic incantations of fin de siècle poetry and in Tolkien's invented languages. Several papers examine the function of iconicity in visual and avant-garde poetry, where iconic features allow a reduction of means, which, paradoxically, generates textual diversification and complexity. A discussion of iconic text strategies shows how texts are comprehended through iconic holistic transfer from complex natural and action patterns. 'Liberature', which integrates text, image and physical space, is another novel area of study, as are the investigations into the iconic properties of film and of multimedia performance. Film is intrinsically iconic, while at the same time being, like photography, indexical; in multimedia performance, on the other hand, iconicity functions intermedially by both integrating and reflecting processes of perception and conceptualization. These last two new fields of inquiry further enhance this truly interdisciplinary volume's explorations of icons as 'insistent images'.

A quarterly review of philosophy.

When we go to a baseball stadium and cheer a person like Babe Ruth for hitting the ball harder, higher, further and more often than the other players, we are cheering him as our representative. We cheer people of exceptional accomplishment whose achievements are so highly visible and so obviously measurable because we, too, are faced with the complexity of the lives that we live and are challenged to perform feats of heroic proportions just to be able to say that we have lived our lives well when we come to the end. In the novel, Babe Ruth says, There aint nothin like a game of baseball. There aint nothin like a beautiful summer day, with the clouds light and fluffy and the sun on the back of your shoulders and a nice liftin breeze comin down onto the field from out of the stands. The man who feels this way about the game he loves is a man who faces enormous challenges, digs deep down inside himself and finds whatever is needed in order to triumph in the game of life. This makes him a fitting representative for us all; we all hit spectacular home runs in out own quiet ways.

Issues for 1920-1947 include the proceedings of the society.

Wilde in the Dream Factory studies the influence of Oscar Wilde's work on American cinema and culture, with close readings of Wilde's works alongside screwball comedies and film noir of the 1930s and 40s.

"This book delineates the theatre's deep connection with the grotesque and traces the historically extensive and theoretically intensive relationship between performance and its "other," the grotesque. It also presents a general theory of the grotesque"--

If one name stands out among musicologists writing today, that name is Joseph Kerman. Eminent, wide-ranging, and wonderfully readable, Kerman's writing on musicology, opera, Beethoven, and Elizabethan music has informed and inspired an extensive audience both in America and abroad. There is much to interest both the general reader and the musicologist in this collection of twenty essays. Included are several notable pleas addressed by Kerman to his professional colleagues in an effort to get them to adopt a more critical orientation for their work. Other essays range from a moving account of William Byrd as a spokesman for the beleaguered Elizabethan Catholic minority to a discerning analysis of Beethoven's well-known obsession with the key of C minor. The controversial tenets of Kerman's classic Opera as Drama (1956) are reaffirmed in essays on Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute, Tristan und Isolde, Ernani and I Lombardi. Kerman's legacy to a younger generation is here, too: in an exemplary writing style, he offers challenging models for a humane and historically informed music criticism. An added gem is the Preface, which provides an intellectual and anecdotal road map of the place of the essays in Kerman's academic and public expeditions. Joseph Kerman has been at the very center of musicology for almost four decades. This overview of his work will be warmly received and greatly valued.