Product Description
Responding to the broadening of the canon in recent years, this accessible anthology balances a generous selection of familiar Renaissance figures with important texts by women writers.

• Includes important texts by women writers alongside more familiar Renaissance masters.
  
• Offers many key works of the period in their entirety.
  
• Introductions and annotations to the texts reflect the developments in critical and cultural theory as well as the current state of Renaissance scholarship.
  
• One of the first anthologies to include cross-references to materials available on the Internet.

Customer Reviews (2)

A disappointment
Renaissance Literature has a very well chosen, wide-ranging selection of material from the period, but unfortunately the production quality is low; it seems as though all the effort went into the glossy cover.The paper is too thin, the print so very small and close together that it really hurts the eyes.Misprints are common. The annotation provided is wildly inconsistent; some items have many useful (if nearly illegible) footnotes, others none at all.If the book were pulled from circulation, re-edited, and re-issued in legible form, it could be an excellent resource, far more ample in content than the dominant Norton Anthology; unfortunately, it isn't really useable as it is.

Illegible font
Ignoring the normal quibbles anyone would have with anthologies' selections is easy when you check out Payne and Hunter's volume--or, rather, try to check it out. Like others in the Blackwell series, _Renaissance Literature_ is rendered useless by its size print: far too small to be seen comfortably for even a moment, far FAR too small if you'd like to read, say, _The Faerie Queen_. Not recommended, not recommendable. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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Life in the Victorian period, focusing on the social, religious, scientific, and artistic movements that characterized the age.The reputation of the Victorian age in England has undergone many vicissitudes, but it is now higher than ever. In this important study, Richard D. Altick moves us toward an understanding of the social, intellectual, and theological crises that Carlyle and Dickens, Tennyson and Arnold were daily struggling to solve. And the issues were many: the revolution in class structure and class attitudes; the rise of utilitarianism and the evangelical spirit; the crisis in religion, including the Oxford movement and Darwinism; the democratization of culture; the place of art and the artist in an industrial, bourgeois society; the effects of industrialism, especially on the way people live. Altick brings to the discussion of these complicated questions the lively and sensitive intelligence that his many readers have come to expect. He includes contemporary illustrations and a full reference index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Essential reading for Victorian lit lovers
If you love Victorian literature, this book will shed a whole new light on your favorite novels. Richard Altick has composed a compelling view of the many changes that rocked nineteenth-century England.

The Victorian era witnessed many changes in science, technology and religion. The railroad transformed England's green landscape. The opening of mills created jobs with oppressive conditions. The gap between the rich and the poor widened.

The Victorian era was a time of rampant change. Religious sects clashed with other sects and with political movements. Writers and artists in the nineteeth century attempted to portray the many changes that transformed Regency England into what we call the Victorian era.

I have been reading Victorian literature for some time, however, I still found this book incredibly insightful. Many of us have a Victorian fetish, but many would be be surprised to know that many Victorians hated what industrialization did to their existence. Although the nineteeth century brought with it many modern inventions, poverty and diease made many long for the distant past. This is accurately portrayed by some of the poets and artists of the period, specifically the Pre-Raphaelites. An excellent book for Victorian era lovers.

Extremely literate, but not specialised
There is one point I argue with -- the idea that the Liberals (Adam Smith) et al tried to open markets, but would not provide Poor Relief. Who made the fancy drawing rooms a reality? The anonymous laborers in the coal mines, the looms, the forests and fields of India and Ireland! It cannot be pondered "in balance"! It is injustice that should not be repeated.

Great helpful book on Victorian Ideas.
Richard Alricks' book Victorian People and Ideas presents an accessible and enjoyable overview to Victorian culture. He presents a clear and well-researched understanding of the issues that plagued Victorians from a social, theological, and intellectual standpoint. Altick writes about the effects of the emerging industrial revolution on the way ordinary people lived, the importance of art and literature in the upper-class society, the new idea of democracy, and perhaps most important to writers such as Tennyson - the crisis in religion and the loss of faith that followed the publication of The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin. Altick manages to cram quite a bit of material into an easily readable, engaging, and well-organized work of non-fiction.
In the preface, Altick writes that this book is not "meant to be a comprehensive survey of Victorian life and ideas" but rather, that the book is intended as an introduction to the era. He makes the point that this book should not be substituted for reading the actual literature in which his book references. He also the emphasizes how, unlike other eras in human history, the literature of the Victorian period is so connected with the Victorians contemporary lifestyle,philosophy, and culture.
I imagine the intended audience for this book is anyone interested in Victorian culture, ideas, or obviously, anyone with a desire to learn more about the context surrounding important literature of the time. Yet this book is not sufficient in this respect. This work should be considered a jumping-off point as a means of finding other sources related to specific topics. The reference section proved helpful for finding more information on subjects the book only touched upon.
The author's informal style suits the intended audience. While some non-fiction books on Victorian culture and literature can seem dull, Altick's book is rather non-daunting due to its well-organized and engaging style. The narrative is scattered with interesting facts and illustrations which prove useful in context for the literature, politics, and events discussed.

No Mere "Companion"
Did you ever read a book by an academic and think to yourself, "Gosh, I hope his lectures are better than his writing, or else I pity his students."I guarantee that thought won't occur to you while reading this wonderful work.Recognizing that the author, not inappropriately, chose to style it as a "companion" to Victorian literature, and likely would have disavowed any suggestion that it is actually a work of history, that's in fact what it is, and a great one.But rather than simply a social history, it is primarily an intellectual history of the period with an emphasis on the roles of artists and men and women of letters as well as the Utilitarians, Evangelicals, the Oxford Movement, the Pre-Raphaelites, incipient socialism, all thoroughly accessible to readers unacquainted with the period but surpassingly enjoyable to the most knowledgeable among us as well.I come backwards to the book, having read much Victorian literature, innumerable histories of the period and biographies of its principal actors.But I enjoyed the book tremendously nonetheless, not only because it sharpened and refined my understanding of the subjects treated, but also because of the author's superb writing skills.Professor Altick died earlier this year, having served on the OSU faculty from 1945 to 1982 (!), and having been honored as the only Regents Professor in his department's history.This book and his other works (more of which I will certainly read) will serve as suitable memorials to a marvelous writer and an undoubtedly great teacher.

Superb reading!
I am pleasantly surprised at what a marvelous read this book is! Altick provides a very thorough background on Victorian history, people, philosophy, economics, politics, religion, literature etc. which is not only highly informative but also fascinating. After carrying this book everywhere for a week and delighting at even having the opportunity to read two pages at a time, I found myself returning to Amazon.com to look for other books by the same author.

Altick not only knows the Victorian experience (and its development and changes throughout the 19th century), but he knows how to present it in a manner which is highly illuminating. Another plus is how, perhaps without meaning to, he provides a backdrop for socio-political-economic developments of the 20th century, which not only affected Great Britain, but spread across the Atlantic to the U.S. As a result, I am not only becoming much more knowledgeable about Victorian times and able to understand the context of the Victorian novels I have been reading, but I have become more aware of the philosophies, value systems and practices which have shaped western society today. This is one of the best nonfiction books I have ever read. ... Read more

Product Description
This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

Product Description
This book is a significant addition to a growing body of scholarship on popular culture s role in mediating contemporary life and power relations in Africa. The book is a demonstration that popular cultural productions are not fixed to an unchanging social category as the basis for their creation, but are defined by mobility of ideas, creative borrowing and improvisation.It deals with popular media, ranging from inscriptions on matatu (taxis) to cartoon strips and fiction columns in newspapers. If cartoon strips and humour columns in popular periodicals provide alternative sites of expression in a fast-evolving socio-cultural formation, then the matatu discourses signal a radical avant-garde African cultural expression. The book also provides a compelling reading of how urban legends, rumours and jokes proliferate alongside pop music to express a sub-culture that is at once a critique and a celebration of modernity and its fragments.It draws attention to the evolution of popular music at different historical moments in East Africa and locates the verve of vernacular discourses as a dominant factor in the artistescreative geniuses, while pointing to how this music has melded with other external influences. Of major interest in this volume is how the more recent output of popular fiction has been fuelled by the effect of HIV/AIDS, giving credence to the fact that popular literature and culture feeds off topical issues of the day. Urban Legends, Colonial Myths is the most comprehensive study of popular literature in East Africa to date. It brings together some of the best students and scholars of the popular imagination in Africa who, with theoretical sophistication and a keen sense of cultural history, provide insights into the production of forms of expression that have been central to understanding what it means to be African in the modern world. In the world of popular artists, a new Africa has been in the making for the last fifty years, and here we have a ... Read more

Product Description
This volume offers a description of early modern habits of writing and reading, of publication and stage performance, and of political and religious writing.

Product Description
This Companion explores the Bible's role and influence on individual writers, whilst tracing the key developments of Biblical themes and literary theory through the ages.

• An ambitious overview of the Bible's role and influence on English literature - as arguably the most powerful work of literature in history - from the medieval period up through the 20th century
• Includes introductory sections to each period giving background information about the Bible as a source text in English literature, and placing writers in their historical context
• Draws on examples from medieval, early-modern, eighteenth-century and Romantic, Victorian, and Modernist literature
• Includes many 'secular' or 'anti-clerical' writers alongside their 'Christian' contemporaries, revealing how the Bible's text shifts and changes in the writing of each author who reads and studies it

Product Description
In Corresponding Cultures: Studies in the Relations between the Two Literatures of Wales, M. Wynn Thomas examines the way in which the two literatures of Wales, and the two cultures from which they originate, have long coexisted and sometimes corresponded. The making of cross-cultural connections and comparisons is likely to be given fresh impetus and urgency in the bicultural Wales promised by the establishment of the National Assembly. In this stimulating study, fresh perspectives are opened and new light is shed in a number of directions: Henry Vaughan and Dylan Thomas are reconsidered in the context of the bicultural society in which they lived, there is a substantial survey of literary translation from Welsh into English, a discussion of the relation of gender identity to national identity, an analysis of Welsh images of America and a blueprint of the kind of work which needs to be done in order to make the Welsh aware of their bicultural past and present.This book will appeal to the general reader as well as to the specialist, and demonstrates, through a consideration of literary texts, that no understanding of Wales or its history can be complete unless the coexistence of two cultures is taken into account. M. Wynn Thomas is Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Research into the English Literature and Language of Wales, University of Wales, Swansea. His many books include The Lunar Light of Whitman's Poetry, Morgan Llwyd, Emyr Humphreys, The Page's Drift: R. S. Thomas at eighty, Internal Difference: writing in twentieth-century Wales and DiFfinio Dwy Lenyddiaeth Cymru. He is a Fellow of the British Academy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

the most comprehensive index ever
Quite the best indexing I've come across. Marvelous. ... Read more

Product Description
Garcia Mainar's critical study of the films of the late Stanley Kubrick includes analysis of all but his last work, Eyes Wide Shut, and offers both a formal analysis of the films based on style and narrative pattern, and a theoretical, postmodernist approach to ideas presented in the films. Garcia Mainar is particularly concerned with analyzing the relevance of spectacle in Kubrick's films, seeing it as a disruptive mechanism that can call into question the value and necessity of communication. He identifies different kinds of spectacle in the films, and proceeds to a detailed examination of these different forms in 2001 A Space Odyssey, Barry Lyndon, and Full Metal Jacket. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Narrative and stylistic patterns in reviewing Kubrick...
It's about time someone would write up a profound review onsuch a profound director. Such a book should be almost the cinematiccontra to the excellent review, "Rhetoric of fiction", by Wayne C. Booth, where he examines the question: "Where does the real story lie?", to which th answer is, ofcourse, in the reader/viewer's mind, and not on the screen, or in the pages of the book. But this book is not such... Such examples are lacking in the book, which is very interesting, there's no mistake in it, but it doesn't examine the purpose of such narrative and stylistic tools, but only very broadly points them out.

Still, very good. ... Read more

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Poems, stories, letters and extracts from novels, plays and journals present a great variety of responses to Australia and to the art of writing. Items have been arranged into 12 groupings that reflect different ways of seeing the material of Australian writing. Each section has its own introduction. Problems are explained, theories and contexts for a wider understanding are offered. The book includes biographical guides to all authors and a full chronological table of events in the literary history of Australia. ... Read more

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Renaissance Drama provides a comprehensive and engaging new account of one of the richest periods of theatre history: the drama of early modern England produced for the professional theatre. It brings new insights to bear by exploring the plays in their relation to the culture and society of the period.

Sandra Clark takes the reader through a compelling examination of how plays participate in and respond to changing anxieties, for instance about English nationhood, the monarchy, or the role of the family, sometimes raising difficult questions or offering challenges to accepted views. Unlike many books on Elizabethan drama, the book is organized so as to cover a wide range of plays, some familiar, many less so, by many playwrights, from Lyly in the 1580s to Shirley in the 1640s. Shakespeare is not foregrounded, but neither is he excluded; a chapter considers his dialogue with contemporaries and also the ways in which later playwrights wrote back to his work.

Renaissance Drama will become standard reading for all students and scholars of English literature or the early modern period. ... Read more

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Empire Writing is the first anthology to gather together British imperial writing alongside native and settler literature, interweaving short stories, poems, essays, travel writing, and memoirs from the phase of British expansionist imperialism known as high empire. This wide-ranging selection reveals the diversity of responses to colonial experience, and encompassessome of the empire's key symbols and emblematic moments.Comprehensive notes and full biographies ensure that this is one of the most compelling, readable and academically valuable source books on the period. ... Read more

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Twentieth-century work on Welsh manuscripts has been largely dependent on the publications of Gwenogvryn Evans a century ago. This volume offers a revision of the subject. It provides a coherent view of the Welsh manuscript tradition and detailed studies which have transformed our understanding of some of the key manuscripts, such as Liber Landavensis (the book of Llandaff), the Hendregadredd Manuscript and the White Book of Rhydderch. ... Read more

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The Alchemist has been described as "the greatest farce in the English language".In this newly established edition, Ben Jonson's rich play offers intriguing insights info London life of the early seventeenth century.He satirises and celebrates the confusions and anarchy of a fast-moving city world populated by a fascinating array of diverse and devious characters.Cambridge Literature is a series of study texts which presents writing in the English-speaking world from the 16th century up to the present day.The series includes novels, drama, short stories, poetry, essays and other types of non-fiction.Each edition has the complete text with an appropriate glossary.The student will find in each volume a helpful introduction and a full section of resource notes encouraging active and imaginative study methods. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Under Shakespeare's Shadow.

Ben Jonson is a great writer who's only mistake must be to have been born at the same time as the great Shakespeare. Full of satire and sexual innuendos, The Alchemist narrates the tale of two rogues, one the alchemist who promises people to turn all their items to gold and the other his helper. Matched with a prostitute who fools around with them it makes a comic tale of lust and greed.

The apprentice always gets the treasure chest
A comedy that reveals some common traits in Ben Jonson plays. The Alchemist is a crook who, with the help of a woman and a servant, tries to get as much money as possible from anyone who is ready to believe brilliant promises founded on myths like turning lead into gold, or ready palms, or ready the stars and predicting the future, or getting married to some nobleman. It is all a bunch of lies wrapped up in beautiful language that uses a lot of Latin and Greek to make the promises both dim and brilliant, dim in meaning and brilliant in sound. It works very well till the neighbours start complaining about the agitation in the street and in the house, and till the owner of the house comes back and finds out what is going on. But the servant, aptly named Face, manages to get out of the trap by providing the owner of the house with a wife in the shape of a widow that had been brought in to marry a hypothetical Spanish count. She takes the first one that is ready to go through the procedure and it is the landlord. Since she brings a good dowry,this landlord keeps the servant Face in his service. On the other side the two other crooks, Subtle, the Alchemist, and Doll, his woman, have escaped through the backyard leaving everything behind, particularly everything they had been able to get from their gullible clients. Face gets the profit and is purified by his new master. The master of the house easily gets everyone out, all the complainers who do not dare go to a court, especially since they have no written evidence of the tricks they have been the victims of, which would mean they would look like fools. They just drop the matter and go away. Crooks once again work in groups and it is the lowest servant of the band that reveals himself to be more intelligent and swift than his own master, so that he cheats him out of the profit, he manages to get clean out of the business, and he even gets a better position than before. All along Ben Jonson ridicules doctors, puritans, rich people who want to satisfy their ambition for power with quick easy and somewhat magical means. Hence the gullible victims of such crooks are definitely made fun of, though Ben Jonson saves morality in a way by punishing the master crook who loses everything, and yet is immoral because the crook apprentice or helper gets all the profit, hence stealing all the victims of what they had paid or given. Rather brilliant though slightly verbose.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

there are two books called the ALCHEMIST
most of the reviews here are for the book by Coehlo-- a modern fairy tale about "following your heart".THE BOOK ON THIS PAGE IS BY BEN JOHNSON the famous renaissance poet.Someone out there in amazon.com land should fix this!!!

aaagghhhh
What's going on?You are all referring to the WRONG BOOK ... Read more

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Does children's literature portray the authentic perspectives of children, or does it present the views of the adults who write, sell, and review the books? How does it demonstrate the ways in which perceptions of childhood have developed over the centuries? How are issues of censorship and freedom of speech brought to light in children's books?
Addressing these and many other issues, Crosscurrents of Children's Literature: An Anthology of Texts and Criticism is the only anthology of classic and contemporary readings in children's literature to combine primary works with related critical essays. Organized thematically around modern critical debates, the selections explore how children's literature integrates instruction and entertainment, oral and written traditions, realism and fantasy, words and pictures, classics and adaptations, and perspectives on childhood and adult life. Illuminating the rich diversity of children's literature studies, the book incorporates approaches from several different fields including psychology, education, history, cultural studies, and literary criticism. It spans a wide range of literary periods and genres, balancing contemporary and historical texts, excerpts and longer selections, traditional and nontraditional materials, and English and translated works. The volume includes Native American and African American writings and offers insights into a variety of cultural and ethnic traditions. It is enhanced by introductory essays, illustrations, an alternate table of contents organized by genre, a timeline, and a bibliography of critical works. An Instructor's Manual and a Website (http://crosscurrentsoup.org) provide additional helpful resources.
Examining how literary forms and genres, diverse influences, and evolving attitudes toward childhood have shaped the field of children's literature, Crosscurrents of Children's Literature: An Anthology of Texts and Criticism encourages students and other readers to challenge common assumptions about children, childhood, and children's books. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A bit banged up
The book when it arrived was in worse shape than I thought.Although readable the book had excessive writing in it, withered edges on the front cover and some water damage to the pages.The book however is good for the class still, able to be read.I just would have appreciated the reasons why it was in good shape.I have a feeling when I go to resell the book after I'm done with it for the class, I'm going to have trouble getting the price close to what I paid because the book is in worse condition than I thought it would be for a good condition book.
Other than that the book is the same in the picture and all stories are readable, and that is the important part.

Literature
I bought this book for my brother for school and he loves it.It looked and felt brand new to him. It was worth the price.

Crosscurrents of Children's Literature
Stahl, J.D. Tina L. Hanlon and Elizabeth Keyser, ed. 2007. Crosscurrents of children's literature: An anthology of texts and criticism. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN#9780195134933.

Crosscurrents of children's literature is a strong collection of essays and criticism with supporting excerpts from primary sources bringing children's literature to the forefront of literary studies. Focusing upon current concerns and debates, the editors and contributing essayists explore and discuss the various traditions of literature through the ages: instruction, gender issues, values, entertainment, oral history, word, pictures, fantasy, realism, censorship and perspectives.

Each section of the anthology presents an introductory essay followed by primary sources of essays written by literary experts and children's authors. Within the individual essays are excerpts of children's literature to support the author's argument as well as stand alone short stories, poems, and excerpts from well-known literature such as Hansel and Gretel, Huckleberry Finn, and Charlotte's Web, to name a few. Each selection is used to provide examples of the focus of each particular section, and each section is then finalized with further recommended readings.

The first section of the anthology begins with a look at whether children's literature seeks to entertain or teach, pulling primary sources, or essays, from C. S. Lewis, Charles Perrault, Lewis Carroll, Gary Paulsen and more. The editors and essayists discuss whether children's literature is created as a desire to instruct or influence children while also seeking to entertain; looking at the historical timeline from cautionary tales to the more satirical cautionary tales found in much of today's children's literature. From the discussions of the first section, the authors pull together essays for the second section that begins to look at how children's literature is seen as either the subjection of children or the subversion of adult authority. Censorship comes to the forefront due in part to a perceived innocence of children by adults as well as the adult perspectives of suitability. The third section looks at the connection between the oral and written traditions in literature: at the cultural patterns of life and traditions that make up the foundations of children's literature as intertwined with purpose. The fourth section deals with the oft challenged realm of fantasy as well as being juxtaposed with realism. More importantly, the section looks at the historical time line of how the definition for both of these genres has changed, given time, events, traditions, and cultural changes. The subsequent sections deal with gender issues, text, illustrations, satires, spin-offs and adaptations, values, and censorship.

In each case the sections are packed with authoritative essays and supportive text, creating an anthology of literary note.
The text itself has access features that support a reader's search for more information with a strong selected bibliography on the history and criticism of children's literature, a timeline of children's literature, credits, and index. It is an excellent resource for a professional educator or collegiate student who is looking to further his or her understanding of the varied history and purposes for children's literature. The professional aspect of this collection of literary criticism is outstanding and truly a volume of work that needs to be a part of a professional collection within this field of study.
... Read more

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