A new wave of scholarship inspired by the ways the writers and musicians of the long nineteenth century themselves approached the relationship between music and words.

This book is a comprehensive study of the nineteenth-century German poet Heinrich Heine. Anthony Phelan examines the complete range of Heine's work, from the early poetry and 'Pictures of Travel' to the last poems, including personal polemic and journalism. Phelan provides original and detailed readings of Heine's major poetry and throws fresh light on his virtuoso political performances that have too often been neglected by critics. Through his critical relationship with Romanticism, Heine confronted the problem of modernity in startlingly original ways that still speak to the concerns of post-modern readers. Phelan highlights the importance of Heine for the critical understanding of modern literature, and in particular the responses to Heine's work by Adorno, Kraus and Benjamin. Heine emerges as a figure of immense European significance, whose writings need to be seen as a major contribution to the articulation of modernity.

The Liang dynasty (502-557) is one of the most brilliant and creative periods in Chinese history and one of the most underestimated and misunderstood. Under the Liang, literary activities, such as writing, editing, anthologizing, and cataloguing, were pursued on an unprecedented scale, yet the works of this era are often dismissed as "decadent" and no more than a shallow prelude to the glories of the Tang. This book is devoted to contextualizing the literary culture of this era--not only the literary works themselves but also the physical process of literary production such as the copying and transmitting of texts; activities such as book collecting, anthologizing, cataloguing, and various forms of literary scholarship; and the intricate interaction of religion, particularly Buddhism, and literature. Its aim is to explore the impact of social and political structure on the literary world.

This book, dedicated by its author to all who understand or do not understand the Malays as well as to those who wish to know them better, provides a rare and insightful entry into those elements that best define and represent the Malaysian Malay community. Fully aware of the fact that the Malays, as a relatively small race in global terms, has been influenced in terms of their traditional beliefs as well as cultural practices by elements from India, Indonesia as well as the World of Islam, the author yet manages to successfully indicate what makes the Malays unique when it comes to their identity. In essence, he catches the spirit or soul of the Malays. The features selected for this purpose have been defined or described in a relatively uncomplicated manner and in simple terms so that the work is accessible to non-expert readers both at home and abroad. It makes an interesting and almost casual entry into what may be defined as Malay. The photographs and illustrations provided add value to the work, which in many ways is a unique piece of writing.

SuvaRna-Padma, the Golden Lotus is one the most important works of well-known Malaysian writer and scholar, Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof, whose two previous plays, Halfway Road, Penang and The Trial of Hang Tuah the Great, have become internationally recognized for their originality of style, as well as significance of issues raised. This play, written in similarly original style, this time approaching the subject matter through the slant of symbolism and myth, deals with the existential dilemma of a writer, Vacha, in a repressive society where censorship is a major problem inhibiting creativity, seriously affecting him psychologically, as well as in terms of his private and public life. In terms of the pertinent issues it deals with, its meaning as well as its stylistic approach, this play transcends cultural boundaries to attain universality.

Collects reviews for one thousand enduring classic rock albums ranging from the extremely popular to more obscure works.

This book, first published in 1961, traces the lives and works of six outstanding Russian authors, each of whom is interesting and important in himself, as well as for his contribution to Russian letters. As personalities they are extremely varied, and also as artists, so much so that each of them might be studied as the centre of a distinct school of writing. Taken as a group they are a microcosm of Russian literature in the twentieth century, an age of rapid and extreme change.