by Donald Lateiner (1995)
No previous work has thoroughly analyzed nonverbal behavior in Homeric epic. Gesture and posture, conscious and unconscious manipulation of space and time, and involuntary "leakage" such as twitching and shivering can intensify and underline - or contradict and ironize - the speech of characters and hexameter narrative. Lateiner explores how the Homeric poems frequently and consistently employ gesture, posture, and vocalics to convey situation and meaning, sometimes instead of speech or instrumental action, sometimes in addition to those signals of meaning. Sardonic Smile has been written for a broad audience including classicists, cultural historians, anthropologists, semioticians, and students of comparative literature. A general introduction to gesture in life and literature, translated Greek, and a glossary of terms make the volume accessible to student and scholar alike.
Bertrand Russell
In the following pages I have confined myself in the main to those problems of philosophy in regard to which I thought it possible to say something positive and constructive, since merely negative criticism seemed out of place. For this reason, theory of knowledge occupies a larger space than metaphysics in the present volume, and some topics much discussed by philosophers are treated very briefly, if at all.
Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha
Characteristically, William Faulkner minimized his familiarity with the theories of psychology that were current during the years of his apprenticeship as a writer, especially those of Freud. Yet, Faulkner's works prove to be a trove for psychological study. These original papers from the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, held in 1991 at the University of Mississippi, vary widely in their approaches to recent psychological speculation about Faulkner's texts. In recent years psychological analysis of literature has shifted largely from investigation of a writer's life to a focus on the work itself. Whether applying the theories of Freud and Lacan, drawing upon theoretical work in women's studies and men's studies, or emphasizing the rigid determinacy of psychological pressure, the essays included in this collection show Faulkner's works to be unquestionably rich in psychological materials.
Pushpa Naidu Parekh
Response to Failure provides a significant contribution to the existing body of literary scholarship on Gerard Manley Hopkins, Francis Thompson, Lionel Johnson, and Dylan Thomas. The author explored the texture of autobiographical experiences of "failure" that inform the poems and the poets' responses within the intellectual, cultural, religions, and political climates of their times. Unique comparative and cross-disciplinary approaches have been employed, including reader-response interpretation of the poems, as well as gender- and culture-centered theories of literary criticism and culture studies.
Whitley Strieber
According to bestselling author Whitley Strieber, his contact with strange aliens did not end with the release of his controversial book, Communion. Instead, the "visitors" kept coming. In Transformation, Strieber challenges his own fear for a triumphant breakthrough in understanding. Soon to be a movie. HC: Morrow. (Nonfiction).