This series of critical pieces is variously structured, with conventional essays, extended meditations, and short analytic notes appealing to differing tastes. Indeed, the diverse format constitutes a secondary thesis: like the artists about whom they write, literary critics are obliged to discover (and execute, of course) the form best suited to convey the content. The material in this case consists of meticulous close readings of authors almost spanning the alphabetical spectrum: from Akhmatova to Yeats; from Blake and Borges to Williams and Wittgenstein – and likewise, ranging over centuries: the sixteenth through the twentieth. Shakespeare and the Modernists largely figure in these musings, which illuminate, entertain, and genuinely engage. As T.S. Eliot remarked, “Our talking about poetry is an extension of our experience of it; and as a good deal of thinking has gone to the making of poetry, so a good deal may go to the study of it.”

This volume examines the role and representation of ‘race’ and ethnicity in the media with particular emphasis on the United States. It highlights contemporary work that focuses on changing meanings of racial and ethnic identity as they are represented in the media; television and film, digital and print media are under examination. Through fourteen innovative and interdisciplinary case studies written by a team of internationally based contributors, the volume identifies ways in which ethnic, racial, and national identities have been produced, reproduced, stereotyped, and contested. It showcases new emerging theoretical approaches in the field, and pays particular attention to the role of race, ethnicity, and national identity, along with communal and transnational allegiances, in the making of identities in the media. The topics of the chapters range from immigrant newspapers and gangster cinema to ethnic stand-up comedy and the use of ‘race’ in advertising.

?The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.? (Mark Twain) What?s the difference between: Nectar and ambrosia? Bough and branch? Astonished and surprised? Sensual and sensuous? Beside and besides? Many people use these words interchangeably but there are actually subtle and interesting differences in meaning and usage. Now from the author of Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge comes a fun and fascinating word reference book for word lovers, students, and trivia collectors alike. Readers will relish learning about these distinctions in this entertaining homage to a gift we use every day?words.

This book presents a critical reading of Kristapurāṇa, the first South Asian retelling of the Bible. In 1579, Thomas Stephens (1549–1619), a young Jesuit priest, arrived in Goa with the aim of preaching Christianity to the local subjects of the Portuguese colony. Kristapurāṇa (1616), a sweeping narrative with 10,962 verses, is his epic poetic retelling of the Christian Bible in the Marathi language. This fascinating text, which first appeared in Roman script, is also one of the earliest printed works in the subcontinent. Kristapurāṇa translated the entire biblical narrative into Marathi a century before Bible translation into South Asian languages began in earnest in Protestant missions. This book contributes to an understanding of translation as it was practiced in South Asia through its study of genre, landscapes, and cultural translation in Kristapurāṇa, while also retelling a history of sacred texts and biblical narratives in the region. It examines this understudied masterpiece of Christian writing from Goa in the early era of Catholic missions and examines themes such as the complexities of the colonial machinery, religious encounters, textual traditions, and multilingualism, providing insight into Portuguese Goa of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first of its kind, the book makes significant interventions into the current discourse on cultural translation and brings to the fore a hitherto understudied text. It will be an indispensable resource for students and researchers of translation studies, comparative literature, religious studies, biblical studies, English literature, cultural studies, literary history, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies.

The first English-language study of the German author and critic Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

Two Texts and I characterizes disciplines of knowledge in terms of the textual features and practices through which knowledge is expressed and produced and the manner in which subjectivity is located or constructed.

At the heart of poetic tradition is a figure of abandonment, a woman forsaken and out of control. She appears in writings ancient and modern, in the East and the West, in high art and popular culture produced by women and by men. What accounts for her perennial fascination? What is her function—in poems and for writers? Lawrence Lipking suggests many possibilities. In this figure he finds a partial record of women's experience, an instrument for the expression of religious love and yearning, a voice for psychological fears, and, finally, a model for the poet. Abandoned women inspire new ways of reading poems and poetic tradition.

A book on English- Literature Reader