Literary Criticism

1. Transforming Bodies, Transforming Epic. 2. Creation, Flood, and Fire. 3. Cadmus and the Tragic Dynasty of Thebes. 4. Human Artistry and Divine Jealousy. 5. The Lives of Women. 6. Aspects of Love. 7. Heroes--Old Style and New. 8. Fantasy, the Fabulous, and the Miraculous Metamorphoses of Nature. 9. Genre and Narrative: Ovid's Polymorphous Poem. 10. After Ovid. Appendix 1. Appendix 2. Index of Persons. General Index more...

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Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose. In Reading Like a Writer , Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers—Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov—and discovers why their work has endured. She takes pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch . She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue, to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail, and to James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield for clever examples of how to employ gesture to create character. She cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart. more...

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To Persians, the fourteenth-century poems of Hafiz are not classical literature from a remote past, but cherished love, wisdom, and humor from a dear and intimate friend. Perhaps, more than any other Persian poet, it is Hafiz who most fully accesses the mystical, healing dimensions of poetry. Daniel Ladinsky has made it his life's work to create modern, inspired translations of the world's most profound spiritual poetry. Through Ladinsky's translations, Hafiz's voice comes alive across the centuries singing his message of love. more...

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A groundbreaking reading of the Iliad that restores Homer’s vision of the tragedy of war, by the bestselling author of The Bounty. Few warriors, in life or literature, have challenged their commanding officer and the rationale of the war they fought as fiercely as did Homer’s hero Achilles. Today, the Iliad is celebrated as one of the greatest works in literature, the epic of all epics; many have forgotten that the subject of this ancient poem was war—not merely the poetical romance of the war at Troy, but war, in all its enduring devastation. Using the legend of the Trojan war, the Iliad addresses the central questions defining the war experience of every age: Is a warrior ever justified in standing up against his commander? Must he sacrifice his life for someone else’s cause? Giving his life for his country, does a man betray his family? How is a catastrophic war ever allowed to start—and why, if all parties wish it over, can it not be ended?. As she did with The Endurance and The Bounty , Caroline Alexander lets us see why a familiar story has had such an impact on us for centuries, revealing what Homer really meant. Written with the authority of a scholar and the vigor of a bestselling narrative historian, The War That Killed Achilles is a superb and utterly timely presentation of one of the timeless stories of our civilization. more...

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A story about how Money + Celebrity = Sex. And always will. It's the summer of 1990. New jack swing has taken hold. Dark, an ambitious music manager who knows his way around the scene, seeks out an unknown singer to become the next R&B star. He finds moldable clay in Brian Barnes, a kid from the projects who briefly tasted fame as a teenaged member of a Jackson Five imitation quintet. After some grooming in and out of the studio, Dark makes a deal with Sony and Brian's first single shoots to the top of the charts. more...

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