Author: Laura Barge In her exploration of the quest for God in Beckett's fiction, Barge discloses a powerful substratum of thematic and narrative movements underlying the rhetoric of Beckett's texts. By studying examples of myth-making structures in representative selections of the fiction, she reveals their profundity and centrality to the whole of Beckett's visionary thought and art. Selections range from Assumption to Company, with attention focused both on the texts and on the criticism concerning them.

Author: By Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Translated by Michael Kidd Co-Winner of the 2004 Colorado Endowment for the Humanities Publication PrizeA snappy, playable though poetic prose translation by Michael Kidd (Carleton College) of Calderon's famous La vida es sueno. That is arguably the best of the 500 plays that survive from this dramatist's alleged 2000 efforts. Moreover, the translation comes with excellent critical introduction, supporting materials, and a glossary. Life's a Dream . . . is the best choice for any university or other theater group that wants to stage this play. The fact that modern English prose cannot capture the florid fol-de-rol of early seventeenth-century Spanish is actually an advantage. The love story and the political implications emerge unscathed.Chronique, Biliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance An excellent and reliable English edition of one of the Spanish Golden Age's more fascinating plays.Frederick A. de Armas, University of Chicago This is a faithful, accurate, and eminently actable poetic prose translation of Calderon's masterpiece, which ingeniously resolves its many intricate linguistic and semantic puzzles.Jose Maria Ruano de la Haza, University of Ottawa A first-class version of one of the all-time classics of world literature.Julio Baena, University of Colorado at Boulder A beautiful and haunting tale of love, betrayal, knowledge, and power, Life's a Dream (La vida es sueno, 1636) is the best known and most widely admired play of Catholic Europe's greatest dramatist, Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681). Calderon's long life witnessed both the pinnacle and collapse of Spanish political power as well as the great flowering of Spanish classical literature. Michael Kidd's new prose translation renders Calderon's masterpiece into a transparent, modern American idiom that preserves the beauty and complexity of Calderon's Baroque Spanish. The result is a highly readable and adaptable text that is enhanced by a generous selection of supporting materials, including a thorough critical introduction and glossary.

Author: Sonja Tiernan This is the first dedicated biography of the extraordinary Irish woman, Eva Gore-Booth. Gore-Booth rejected her aristocratic heritage choosing to live and work amongst the poorest classes in industrial Manchester. Her work on behalf of barmaids, circus acrobats, flower sellers and pit-brow lasses is traced in this book. During one impressive campaign Gore-Booth orchestrated the defeat of Winston Churchill. Gore-Booth published volumes of poetry, philosophical prose and plays, becoming a respected and prolific author of her time and part of W.B. Yeats literary circle. The story of Gore-Booths life is captivating. Her close bond with her sister, an iconic Irish nationalist, provides a new insight into Countess Markieviczs personal life. Gore-Booths life story vividly traces her experiences of issues such as militant pacifism during the Great War, the case for the reprieve of Roger Casements death sentence, sexual equality in the workplace and the struggle for Irish independence.

Author: Alejandro de la Fuente Havana in the 1550s was a small coastal village with a very limited population that was vulnerable to attack. By 1610, however, under Spanish rule it had become one of the best-fortified port cities in the world and an Atlantic center of shipping, commerce, and shipbuilding. Using all available local Cuban sources, Alejandro de la Fuente provides the first examination of the transformation of Havana into a vibrant Atlantic port city and the fastest-growing urban center in the Americas in the late sixteenth century. He shows how local ambitions took advantage of the imperial design and situates Havana within the slavery and economic systems of the colonial Atlantic.