Age of Pi and Prose

Age of Pi and Prose PDF

Author: Venkatesh Rangan

Publisher: Notion Press

Published: 2022-11-12

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13:

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Between 476 CE and 505 CE, three heroic “makers of history” from India laid the seeds of a massive transformation in human society; the effects of which we still feel today. Budhagupta Vikramaditya, the heroic warrior emperor, unified a polarized and disintegrating country, defeated the “world conquering” armies of the Huns, appointed mentors to the Nan Qi emperors of Southern China and paved the way for organized state formation in Tibet. He organized a series of mega conferences that powered a transformative intellectual ferment. Two products of the intellectual ferment of these years were the child prodigy, Aryabhata, and the literary giant, Subandhu. In the wider realm of world politics and society, the effects of events of these three decades in India laid the foundation for some of the most defining moments of civilizational history. These moments included the unification of the Korean peninsula in the 7th cent, the consolidation of imperial control by the Soga clan in Japan, the transformation of Chinese polity, a redefinition of Sassanian kingship in Persia and an intellectual revolution in late medieval Europe. This book is a non-fiction narrative of this incredible yet rare story of three Indians who in a short span of thirty years created a whole new world.

In the Age of Prose

In the Age of Prose PDF

Author: Erich Heller

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780521254939

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The guiding theme of these essays is the fate of the imagination and the condition of art in the modern world, where both appear to be enfeebled by scientific hubris, undermined by psychological self-questioning and compromised by political disaster. Erich Heller traces this predicament with subtlety and profundity, from Hegel's and Nietzsche's diagnoses to the various truces and manoeuvres through which remarkable victories have nonetheless been achieved - such as the comic triumphs of Wilhelm Busch. As elsewhere in Professor Heller's work, Thomas Mann's attempt to outwit and redeem his circumstances through art - 'despite' them, as he said himself - occupies a central place. Three of the present essays are devoted to him. Others consider Kleist, Fontane, Hamsun, Karl Kraus and the crucial figures of Hölderlin (who plays such a central role in Heidegger's later philosophical writings) and Rilke. Written with feeling, and the distinctive elegance and wit that have characterized all of Professor Heller's work, the essays here reaffirm the vital interdependence of literature and human values.

The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose

The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose PDF

Author: Mary Kinzie

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1993-07-15

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780226437361

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The role of the poet, Mary Kinzie writes, is to engage the most profound subjects with the utmost in expressive clarity. The role of the critic is to follow the poet, word for word, into the arena where the creative struggle occurs. How this mutual purpose is served, ideally and practically, is the subject of this bracingly polemical collection of essays. A distinguished poet and critic, Kinzie assesses poetry's situation during the past twenty-five years. Ours, she contends, is literally a prosaic age, not only in the popularity of prose genres but in the resultant compromises with truth and elegance in literature. In essays on "the rhapsodic fallacy," confessionalism, and the romance of perceptual response, Kinzie diagnoses some of the trends that diminish the poet's flexibility. Conversely, she also considers individual poets—Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Howard Nemerov, Seamus Heaney, and John Ashbery—who have found ingenious ways of averting the risks of prosaism and preserving the special character of poetry. Focusing on poet Louise Bogan and novelist J. M. Coetzee, Kinzie identifies a crucial and curative overlap between the practices of great prose-writing and great poetry. In conclusion, she suggests a new approach for teaching writers of poetry and fiction. Forcefully argued, these essays will be widely read and debated among critics and poets alike.

Poisoned Prose

Poisoned Prose PDF

Author: Ellery Adams

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1101595647

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When Olivia Limoges and other Oyster Bay patrons of the arts sponsor a retreat for famous storytellers, one of them is going to have a very unhappy ending… Olivia thought gathering some of the most renowned storytellers in one place would be a nice, simple way for herself and the Bayside Book Writers to appreciate their talents. But things take a dark turn when the most famous storyteller in the nation—the captivating performer Violetta Devereaux—announces onstage that she will meet her end in Oyster Bay. When Violetta is discovered murdered after the show, everyone involved with the retreat becomes a suspect. There are rumors that Violetta, who grew up in extreme poverty in the Appalachian Mountains, possessed an invaluable treasure. Now Chief Rawlings and the Bayside Book Writers must work at a frenzied pace to solve the crime before someone closes the book on them.

Autumn Light

Autumn Light PDF

Author: Pico Iyer

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2019-04-16

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 045149394X

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Returning to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law’s sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office and engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. But in a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, he comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance, and where autumn reminds us to take nothing for granted.

Couples

Couples PDF

Author: John Updike

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2012-03-13

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 0679645721

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“Trapped in their cozy catacombs, the couples have made sex by turns their toy, their glue, their trauma, their therapy, their hope, their frustration, their revenge, their narcotic, their main line of communication and their sole and pitiable shield against the awareness of death.”—Time One of the signature novels of the American 1960s, Couples is a book that, when it debuted, scandalized the public with prose pictures of the way people live, and that today provides an engrossing epitaph to the short, happy life of the “post-Pill paradise.” It chronicles the interactions of ten young married couples in a seaside New England community who make a cult of sex and of themselves. The group of acquaintances form a magical circle, complete with ritualistic games, religious substitutions, a priest (Freddy Thorne), and a scapegoat (Piet Hanema). As with most American utopias, this one’s existence is brief and unsustainable, but the “imaginative quest” that inspires its creation is eternal. Praise for Couples “Couples [is] John Updike’s tour de force of extramarital wanderlust.”—The New York Times Book Review “Ingenious . . . If this is a dirty book, I don’t see how sex can be written about at all.”—Wilfrid Sheed, The New York Times Book Review

Essence of an Age

Essence of an Age PDF

Author: Lydia Redwine

Publisher:

Published: 2018-09

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13: 9781724498311

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Essence of An Age is the first poetry collection by Lydia Redwine and explores the depths of the heart, mind, and soul during the years where one is finding that they are growing up. Its emotional imagery will sweep readers into a world as real as their own, a world dealing with the dualities of life. The salt and sugar. All that is experienced in love and growth.

Reading Like a Writer

Reading Like a Writer PDF

Author: Francine Prose

Publisher: Union Books

Published: 2012-04-01

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1908526149

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In her entertaining and edifying New York Times bestseller, acclaimed author Francine Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and tricks of the masters to discover why their work has endured. Written with passion, humour and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart – to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; to look to John le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O’ Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail; to be inspired by Emily Brontë ’ s structural nuance and Charles Dickens’ s deceptively simple narrative techniques. Most importantly, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted, and reminds us that good writing comes out of good reading.

The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth

The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth PDF

Author: Christopher Schaberg

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2018-07-26

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 1501334328

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What is the role of literary studies in an age of Twitter threads and viral news? If the study of literature today is not just about turning to classic texts with age-old questions, neither is it a rejection of close reading or critical inquiry. Through the lived experience of a humanities professor in a rapidly changing world, this book explores how the careful study of literature and culture may be precisely what we need to navigate our dizzying epoch of post-truth politics and ecological urgency.

Ink and Steel

Ink and Steel PDF

Author: Elizabeth Bear

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780451462091

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With playwright and spy Kit Marley dead, the victim of murder, dramatist William Shakespeare unsuccessfully takes on the Promethean Club's secret battle against sorcerers out to destroy England, until Marley, resurrected by Faerie enchantment, comes to his aid, but first Kit must find the traitor responsible for his death. Original.