Oroonoko
Aphra Behn, Joanna Lipking
This long-awaited Norton Critical Edition of Aphra Behn’s best-known and most influential work makes available the original 1688 text, the only text published in her lifetime. The editor supplies explanatory annotations and textual notes.
"Historical Backgrounds" is an especially rich collection of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century documents about colonizers and slaves in the new world. Topically arranged-"Montaigne on America," "The Settling of Surinam," "Observers of Slavery, 1654–1712," "After Oroonoko: Noble Africans in Europe," and "Opinions on Slavery"-these selections create a revealing context for Behn’s unusual story. Illustrations and maps are also included.
"Criticism" begins with an overview of responses to Behn and Oroonoko, from learned and popular writers of her time to Sir Walter Scott and Virginia Woolf, among others. Current critical interpretations are by William C. Spengemann, Jane Spencer, Robert L. Chibka, Laura Brown, Charlotte Sussman, and Mary Beth Rose.
A Chronology of Behn’s life and a Selected Bibliography are included.
0393970140
Ostara: Customs, Spells & Rituals for the Rites of Spring
Edain McCoy
Celebrate the Awakening Earth at the Spring Equinox
Embrace Ostara as a point of balance in your life, a moment in time where both dark and light and night and day are in harmony before the light is victorious and carries us on to the bounty of summer pleasures. Ostara is packed with rituals, spells, recipes, crafts, and customs to celebrate the awakening earth.
This delightful guidebook will help you deepen your understanding of the spiritual aspects of this ancient spring holiday, and discover new ideas for expressing that spirituality.
0738700827
Outlaw Cook
John Thorne
In essays ranging from his earliest cooking lessons in a cold-water walk-up apartment on New York's Lower East Side to opinions both admiring and acerbic on the food writers of the past ten years, John Thorne argues that to eat exactly what you want, you
0865474796
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.
Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.
0316017922
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The Overcoat and the Nose
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809-1852) was a Russian writer of Ukrainian ethnicity and birth. Often called the “father of modern Russian realism, ” he was one of the first Russian authors to criticize his country’s way of life. Although his early works were heavily influenced by his Ukrainian upbringing, he wrote in Russian and his works belong to the tradition of Russian literature. Gogol was one of the first masters of short prose, alongside Pushkin, Mérimée, Hoffmann, and Hawthorne. The main and most persistent characteristic of Gogol’s style is its verbal expressiveness. He wrote with a view not so much to the acoustic effect on the ears of the listener as to the sensuous effect on the vocal apparatus of the reciter. The other main characteristic of his genius is the extraordinary intensity and vividness of impressionist vision, sometimes skirting expressionism. The Dead Souls (1842), The Inspector-General and The Overcoat (1842) are among his masterpieces.
0146001141
The Oxford Companion to American Literature
the late James D. Hart, Phillip Leininger
For more than half a century, The Oxford Companion to American Literature has been an unparalleled guide to America's literary culture, providing one of the finest resources to this country's rich history of great writers. Now this acclaimed work has been completely revised and updated to reflect current developments in the world of American letters.
Editors James D. Hart, until the time of his death, and Phillip Leininger have updated the Sixth Edition in light of what has happened in American literature since 1982. To this end, they have revised the entries on such established authors as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Joyce Carol Oates, and they have added well over 180 new entries on novelists (T. Coraghessan Boyle, Tim O'Brien, Louise Erdrich, Cormac McCarthy, Don De Lillo), poets (Rita Dove, Weldon Kees), playwrights (Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson), popular writers (Stephen King, Louis L'Amour), historians (James McPherson, David Herbert Donald, William Manchester), naturalists (Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey), and literary critics (Camille Paglia, Richard Ellman). In addition, the Companion boasts more women, African American, and ethnic voices with new entries on such luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, M.F.K. Fisher and William Least Heat-Moon, Ursula Le Guin and Oscar Hijuelos, among many others.
These additions represent only part of the revisions for the new edition. Of course, the basic qualities of the Companion that readers have grown to know and love over the years are as superb as ever. With over 5,000 total entries, The Oxford Companion to American Literature reflects the dynamic balance between past and contemporary literature, surveying virtually every aspect of our national literature, from the Pulitzer Prize to pulp fiction, and from Walt Whitman to William F. Buckley, Jr. There are over 2,000 biographical profiles of important American authors (with information regarding their style, subjects, and major works) and influential foreign writers as well as other figures who have been important in the nation's social and cultural history. There are more than 1,100 full summaries of important American novels, stories, essays, poems (with verse form noted), plays, biographies and autobiographies, tracts, narratives, and histories. And the new edition provides historical background and astute commentary on literary schools and movements, literary awards, magazines, newspapers, and a wide variety of other matters directly related to writing in America. Finally, the book is thoroughly cross-referenced and features an extensive and fully updated index of literary and social history.
0195065484
The Oxford Companion to English Literature
Margaret Drabble
Since Sir Paul Harvey's original Oxford Companion to English Literature was published in 1932, it has established itself as the standard source of reference for general readers, as well as an indispensable guide for students and specialists, on all aspects of English literature and English literary culture.
In 1985, under the editorship of Margaret Drabble, with a team of distinguished contributors, the text was completely revised while retaining the essential characteristics of Sir Paul Harvey's much-loved volume. Since then, the Companion has continued to respond to the needs of contemporary readers, with a revision, published in 1995, containing sixty new entries on emerging contemporary voices. This new revision continues in this tradition, adding 16 survey articles on important literary concepts to reassert the position of the Companion as the most complete and readable reference guide to English literary culture currently available. No comparable volume offers such extensive coverage of the classical roots of English literature, and of European authors and works that have influenced the development of English literature. Its wide range of articles cover not only authors and their works, but also fictional characters, plot summaries, composers and artists, literary and artistic movements, historians, philosophers, scholars, as well as editors, publishing history, literary societies, newspapers and periodicals, critical terms and theory.
With new articles on such topics as British Black Literature, Post-Colonial Literature, Spy Fiction, Structuralism, Fantasy Fiction, Children's Literature, Ghost Stories, Historical Fiction, and much more, this revised edition offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date coverage available of the fascinating and multifarious world of English literature.
0198662335
Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit & Wisdom From History's Greatest Wordsmiths
Mardy Grothe
ox-y-mor-on-i-ca (OK-se-mor-ON-uh-ca) noun, plural: Any variety of tantalizing, self-contradictory statements or observations that on the surface appear false or illogical, but at a deeper level are true, often profoundly true. See also oxymoron, paradox. examples:
"Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad."
Victor Hugo
"To lead the people, walk behind them."
Lao-tzu
"You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap."
Dolly Parton
You won't find the word "oxymoronica" in any dictionary (at least not yet) because Dr. Mardy Grothe introduces it to readers in this delightful collection of 1,400 of the most provocative quotations of all time. From ancient thinkers like Confucius, Aristotle, and Saint Augustine to great writers like Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and G. B. Shaw to modern social observers like Woody Allen and Lily Tomlin, Oxymoronica celebrates the power and beauty of paradoxical thinking. All areas of human activity are explored, including love, sex and romance, politics, the arts, the literary life, and, of course, marriage and family life. The wise and witty observations in this book are as highly entertaining as they are intellectually nourishing and are sure to grab the attention of language lovers everywhere.
0060536993
The Pagan Book of Days: A Guide to the Festivals, Traditions, and Sacred Days of the Year
Nigel Pennick
The Western pagan tradition emphasizes the mystical elements of spirituality, reverence for the feminine principle, and the links between people and the earth. This unique day book contains a treasury of information about rituals and celebrations that have for centuries been associated with the seasons of the year.
Includes observances of the ancient Greek, Roman, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse traditions, as well as the worship of the Goddess and many practices of the mystery tradition and Wicca.
Provides details on:
The movements of the planets
Auspicious and inauspicious days
Holy days of ancient gods and goddesses
The Eight Stations of the Year (the solstices, equinoxes, and Fire Festivals)
Lunar and solar calendars indicating all major days of Pagan
celebration for 1993 through the millenium
0892813695
The Palace of Strange Girls
Sallie Day
Blackpool, England, 1959. The Singleton family is on holiday. For seven-year-old Beth, just out of the hospital, this means struggling to fill in her 'I-Spy' book and avoiding her mother Ruth's eagle-eyed supervision. Her sixteen-year-old sister Helen, meanwhile, has befriended a waitress whose fun-loving ways hint at a life beyond Ruth's strict rules.
But times are changing. As foreman of the local cotton mill, Ruth's husband, Jack, is caught between unions and owners whose cost-cutting measures threaten an entire way of life. And his job isn't the only thing at risk. When a letter arrives from Crete, a secret re-emerges from the rubble of Jack's wartime past that could destroy his marriage.
As Helen is tempted outside the safe confines of her mother's stern edicts with dramatic consequences, an unexpected encounter inspires Beth to forge her own path. Over the holiday week, all four Singletons must struggle to find their place in the shifting world of promenade amusements, illicit sex, and stilted afternoon teas in this touching and evocative novel.
0446545864
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