Author: Arthur Keaveney File Type: pdf In this second edition of Arthur Keaveneys classic biography, a fresh generation of students, scholars and readers are introduced to one of the most pivotal figures in the outgoing Roman Empire.A definitive book in its field, this second edition is a must read. Completely rewritten and updated to include the further discoveries of the last two decades, it challenges traditional views of Sulla as a tyrant and harsh military dictator and instead delivers a compellingly complex portrait of a man obsessed with the belief that he was blessed with divine favour.Written by a leading authority on the classical world, this lively and entertaining book transports us through Sullas rise from poverty and obscurity to his dictatorship of Rome, highlighting his dedication and achievements in better ordering the Republic before his decline a generation later.**
Author: Mark Everist
File Type: pdf
The Conductus repertory is the body of monophonic and polyphonic non-liturgical Latin song that dominated European culture from the middle of the twelfth century to the beginning of the fourteenth. In this book, Mark Everist demonstrates how the poetry and music interact, explores how musical structures are created, and discusses the geographical and temporal reach of the genre, including its significance for performance today. The volume studies what medieval society thought of the Conductus, its function in medieval society - whether paraliturgical or in other contexts - and how it fitted into patristic and secular Latin cultures. The Conductus emerges as a genre of great poetic and musical sophistication that brought the skills of poets and musicians into alignment. This book provides an all-encompassing view of an important but unexplored repertory of medieval music, engaging with both poetry and music even-handedly to present new and up-to-date perspectives on the genre. **Review There have been no book-length studies of the Conductus until Discovering Medieval Song, expertly written by the foremost authority on the genre, and on music of the so-called ars antiqua more generally. Covering everything from the Conductuss complicated relationship to the liturgy, to its ties with contemporaneous genres such as the motet and organum, Discovering Medieval Song is both the first comprehensive study of the genre and a nuanced examination of thorny issues of performance and musico-poetic relationships. Its broad scope should not confuse readers - this is not merely a reportorial survey. Rather, the book offers new insights into performance, form, and the inter- and intratextual poetics of the Conductus, and includes new discoveries and information on sources and individual works. This will be the book to consult on the genre for many decades to come. Mary Channen Caldwell, University of Pennsylvania Discovering Medieval Song is a masterful achievement. Mark Everist has managed to tame an extremely unruly repertory of medieval song. Ranging far and wide throughout Europe, he brings together the hundreds of examples of the musical-poetic genre of the Conductus in a long-awaited monograph that is the first of its size and scope to tackle the subject. Painstakingly argued and brimming with new insights, this book will also likely be the last word on the topic for years to come. Thomas B. Payne, College of William and Mary, Virginia Book Description The Conductus is a non-liturgical Latin song that dominated European culture in the Middle Ages. This comprehensive book uses cutting-edge research to show how poetry and music interact, exploring the role of the Conductus in medieval society, and providing new perspectives on this important body of music and poetry.
Author: Mark G. Schmeller
File Type: pdf
In the early American republic, the concept of public opinion was a recentand ambiguousinvention. While appearing to promise a new style and system of democratic and deliberative politics, the concept was also invoked to limit self-rule, cement traditional prejudices and hierarchies, forestall deliberation, and marginalize dissent. As Americans contested the meaning of this essentially contestable idea, they expanded and contracted the horizons of political possibility and renegotiated the terms of political legitimacy. Tracing the notion of public opinion from its late eighteenth-century origins to the Gilded Age, Mark G. Schmellers Invisible Sovereign argues that public opinion is a central catalyst in the history of American political thought. Schmeller treats it as a contagious idea that infected a broad range of discourses and practices in powerful, occasionally ironic, and increasingly contentious ways. Ranging across a wide variety of historical fields, Invisible Sovereign traces a shift over time from early political-constitutional concepts, which identified public opinion with a sovereign people and wrapped it in the language of constitutionalism, to more modern, social-psychological concepts, which defined public opinion as a product of social action and mass communication. **
Author: Gloria Sutton
File Type: pdf
In 1965, the experimental filmmaker Stan VanDerBeek (1927--1984) unveiled his Movie-Drome, made from the repurposed top of a grain silo. VanDerBeek envisioned Movie-Drome as the prototype for a communications system -- a global network of Movie-Dromes linked to orbiting satellites that would store and transmit images. With networked two-way communication, Movie-Dromes were meant to ameliorate technologys alienating impulse. In The Experience Machine, Gloria Sutton views VanDerBeek -- known mostly for his experimental animated films -- as a visual artist committed to the radical aesthetic sensibilities he developed during his studies at Black Mountain College. She argues that VanDerBeeks collaborative multimedia projects of the 1960s and 1970s (sometimes characterized as Expanded Cinema), with their emphases on transparency of process and audience engagement, anticipate contemporary arts new media, installation, and participatory practices. VanDerBeek saw Movie-Drome not as pure cinema but as a communication tool, an experience machine. In her close reading of the work, Sutton argues that Movie-Drome can be understood as a programmable interface. She describes the immersive experience of Movie-Drome, which emphasized multi-sensory experience over the visual display strategies deployed in the work the Poemfield computer-generated short films and VanDerBeeks interest, unique for the time, in telecommunications and computer processing as a future model for art production. Sutton argues that visual art as a direct form of communication is a feedback mechanism, which turns on a set of relations, not a technology. **
Author: Robert M. Hazen
File Type: mobi
Life on Earth arose nearly 4 billion years ago, bursting forth from air, water, and rock. Though the process obeyed all the rules of chemistry and physics, the details of that original event pose as deep a mystery as any facing science. How did non-living chemicals become alive? While the question is (deceivingly) simple, the answers are unquestionably complex. Science inevitably plays a key role in any discussion of lifeas origins, dealing less with the question of why life appeared on Earth than with where, when, and how it emerged on the blasted, barren face of our primitive planet. Astrobiologist Robert Hazen has spent many years dealing with the fundamental questions of lifeas genesis. As an active research scientist, he is down deep in all the messy details that science has to offer on the subject, tracing the inexorable sequence of events that led to the complicated interactions of carbonbased molecules. As he takes us through the astounding process of emergence, we are witness to the first tentative steps toward lifeafrom the unfathomable abundance of carbon biomolecules synthesized in the black vacuum of space to the surface of the Earth to deep within our planetas restless crust. We are privy to the breathtaking drama that rapidly unfolds as life prevails. The theory of emergence is poised to answer a multitude of questionsaeven as it raises the possibility that natural processes exist beyond what we now know, perhaps beyond what we even comprehend. Genesis tells the tale of transforming scientific advances in our quest for lifeas origins. Written with grace, beauty, and authority, it goes directly to the heart of who we are and why we are here. **
Author: Michael S. Harper
File Type: epub
In The Vintage Book of African American Poetry, editors Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton present the definitive collection of black verse in the United States--200 years of vision, struggle, power, beauty, and triumph from 52 outstanding poets. From the neoclassical stylings of slave-born Phillis Wheatley to the wistful lyricism of Paul Lawrence Dunbar . . . the rigorous wisdom of Gwendolyn Brooks...the chiseled modernism of Robert Hayden...the extraordinary prosody of Sterling A. Brown...the breathtaking, expansive narratives of Rita Dove...the plaintive rhapsodies of an imprisoned Elderidge Knight . . . The postmodern artistry of Yusef Komunyaka.Here, too, is a landmark exploration of lesser-known artists whose efforts birthed the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movements--and changed forever our national literature and the course of America itself. Meticulously researched, thoughtfully structured, The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry is a collection of inestimable value to students, educators, and all those interested in the ever-evolving tradition that is American poetry. From the Trade Paperback edition. **