Author: Dan Chiasson File Type: pdf Taking on one of the most crucial issues in American poetry of the last fifty years, celebrated poet Dan Chiasson explores what is lost or gained when real-life experiences are made part of the subject matter and source material for poetry. One Kind of Everything elucidates the uses of autobiographical fact and constructions of personhood in American poetry since World War II, with helpful reference to American literature in general since Emerson. Poetry styles in the United States, Chiasson shows, have become polarized in the last half century, characterized as excessively confessional on the one hand, and experimental and rigorously skeptical, on the other. In five extended, scholarly essays - on Robert Lowells facts, which blur the identity of the people depicted in his poems Elizabeth Bishops masks, which confound any kind of personal disclosure to the reader Frank Bidarts presence behind inherited texts Frank OHaras chatty nonchalance that hides a deep interest in acts of memory and Louise Glcks sincerity, which hinges on the readers willingness to trust the lyric speaker - Chiasson looks specifically to bridge the chasm between formal and experimental poetry in the United States. Regardless of form, Chiasson argues that recent American poetry is most thoughtful when it engages most forcefully with autobiographic material, either in an effort to embrace it or denounce it.

Author: Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman File Type: pdf The Cairo Geniza is the largest and richest store of documentary evidence for the medieval Islamic world. This book seeks to revolutionize the way scholars use that treasure trove. Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman draws on legal documents from the Geniza to reconceive of life in the medieval Islamic marketplace. In place of the shared practices broadly understood by scholars to have transcended confessional boundaries, he reveals how Jewish merchants in Egypt employed distinctive trading practices. Highly influenced by Jewish law, these commercial practices served to manifest their Jewish identity in the medieval Islamic context. In light of this distinctiveness, Ackerman-Lieberman proposes an alternative model for using the Geniza documents as a tool for understanding daily life in the medieval Islamic world as a whole.

Author: Howard I. Kushner File Type: pdf Since the late Stone Age, approximately 10 percent of humans have been left-handed, yet for most of human history left-handedness has been stigmatized. In On the Other Hand, Howard I. Kushner traces the impact of left-handedness on human cognition, behavior, culture, and health. A left-hander himself, Kushner has long been interested in the meanings associated with left-handedness, and ultimately with whether hand preference can even be defined in a significant way. As he explores the medical and cultural history of left-handedness, Kushner describes the associated taboos, rituals, and stigma from around the globe. The words left and left hand have negative connotations in all languages, and left-handers have even historically been viewed as disabled.In this comprehensive history of left-handedness, Kushner asks why left-handedness exists. He examines the relationshipif anybetween handedness, linguistics, and learning disabilities, reveals how toleration of left-handedness serves as a barometer of wider cultural toleration and permissiveness, and wonders why the reported number of left-handers is significantly lower in Asia and Africa than in the West. Written in a lively style that mixes personal biography with scholarly research, On the Other Hand tells a comprehensive story about the science, traditions, and prejudices surrounding left-handedness.

Author: John Gross File Type: pdf An unrivalled collection of literary gossip and intimate sidelights on the lives of the authors This hugely entertaining anthology ranges from Chaucer to the present day, with anecdotes that are hilarious, touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, and downright weird. - An unrivalled collection of literary gossip and intimate sidelights on the lives of the authors The dictionary defines an anecdote as a short account of an entertaining or interesting incident, and the anecdotes in this collection more than live up to that description. Many of them are funny, often explosively so. Others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers in the English-speaking world from Chaucer to the present acting both unpredictably, and deeply in character. The range is wide - this is a book which finds room for Milton and Margaret Atwood, George Eliot and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Ian Fleming, Brendan Behan and Wittgenstein. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historians face was once mistaken for a babys bottom, which film star left a haunting account of Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of Hercule Poirot - a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature. - If youre seeking a stocking filler...there is nothing to compare with this entertaining literary patchwork. - Boyd Tonkin and Katy Guest, The IndependentA surprisingly good selection...a collection that will instruct and, more important, give immense pleasure. - Contemporary Review, Volume 288An informative and amusing collection - Patrick Richards, Day by DayJohn Grosss enlightening and hugely enjoyable anthology revivifies the literary dust of many centuries with both wit and grace - Peter Parker, TLSMr Gross has also produced succinct notes to help the reader and has, over all, produced a collection that will instruct and, more importantly, give immense pleasure - Contemporary ReviewGross widens and strenthens the idea of a literary anecdote, with enriching results. Books like this are usually recommnded as ideal bedtime reading. This one, however, should on no account be allowed in the bedroom, or you will find youself awake in the cold, small hours, still turning the pages. - John Carey, Sunday TimesJohn Gross has produced a fascinating book. - Jonathan Sale, Financial Times Magazineso many things here to enjoy - Jeremy Lewis, Literary ReviewThe New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes is a great feast of stories. - Craig Brown, Mail on Sundaya pithy and eclectic collection of tales that reveal the vanity, generosity, foolishness and wisdom of writers, but above all their eccentricity....Such anecdotes are literary garnish. Not to be confused with the meat and drink of literature itself, they are the piquant canapes accompanying a writers life they should be savoured, swallowed whole with a willing suspension of disbelief, and on no account regurgitated in after-dinner speeches. - Ben Macintyre, Times