There is generally no common material that binds together the works of the individual prophets that comprise the Twelve but through Sweeneys commentary they stand together as a single clearly defined book among the other prophetic books of the BibleThe Book of the Twelve Prophets is a multifaceted literary composition that functions simultaneously in al Jewish and Christian versions of the Bible as a single prophetic book and as a collection of twelve individual prophetic books Each of the twelve individual books Hosea Joel Amos Obadiah Jonah Micah Nahum Habakkuk Zephaniah Haggai Zechariah and Malachi begins with its own narrative introduction that identifies the prophet and provides details concerning the historical setting and literary characteristics In this manner each book is clearly distinguished from the others within the overall framework of the TwelveBy employing a combination of literary methodologies such as reader response criticism canonical criticism and structural form criticism Sweeney establishes the literary structure of the Book of the Twelve as a whole and of each book with their respective ideological or theological perspectives An introductory chapter orients readers to questions posed by reading the Book of the Twelve as a coherent piece of literature and to a literary overview of the Twelve Sweeney then treats each of the twelve individual prophetic books in the order of the Masoretic canon providing a discussion of each ones structure theme and outlook This is followed by a detailed literary discussion of the textual units that comprise the bookMarvin A Sweeney is professor of Hebrew Bible at the school of theology at Claremont and professor of religion at the Claremont Graduate School

Author: By Susan Hiner Accessories to Modernity explores the ways in which feminine fashion accessories, such as cashmere shawls, parasols, fans, and handbags, became essential instruments in the bourgeois idealization of womanhood in nineteenth-century France. Considering how these fashionable objects were portrayed in fashion journals and illustrations, as well as fiction, the book explores the histories and cultural weight of the objects themselves and offers fresh readings of works by Balzac, Flaubert, and Zola, some of the most widely read novels of the period.As social boundaries were becoming more and more fluid in the nineteenth century, one effort to impose order over the looming confusion came, in the case of women, through fashion, and the fashion accessory thus became an ever more crucial tool through which social distinction could be created, projected, and maintained. Looking through the lens of fashion, Susan Hiner explores the interplay of imperialist expansion and domestic rituals, the assertion of privilege in the face of increasing social mobility, gendering practices and their relation to social hierarchies, and the rise of commodity culture and woman's paradoxical status as both consumer and object within it.Through her close focus on these luxury objects, Hiner reframes the feminine fashion accessory as a key symbol of modernity that bridges the erotic and proper, the domestic and exotic, and mass production and the work of art while making a larger claim about the accessory statusin terms of both complicity and subordinationof bourgeois women in nineteenth-century France. Women were not simply passive bystanders but rather were themselves accessories to the work of modernity from which they were ostensibly excluded.