The films of Wim Wenders

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David Collings

According to David Collings, Wordsworth interpreted the outbreak of war between England and France in 1793 as a cataclysmic event, one whose utterly disfiguring effect he would trace in his work over the next decade. Expanding upon this extravagant interpretation of events, Collings argues, Wordsworth constructed a poetics of cultural dismemberment - a way for culture to imagine that it survives in the midst of its own destruction. In Wordsworthian Errancies, Collings challenges prevailing critical approaches to Romantic poetry by describing and critiquing this deconstructive account of culture in Wordsworth's poetry. Drawing ideas from deconstruction, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, and queer theory, Collings's reading reveals a radically new Wordsworth, one who is far more concerned with various "queer" modes of sexuality than previously suspected. In a provocative reading of The Prelude, for example, Collings argues that Wordsworth associated his poetic power with homoerotic masochistic fantasies and with his involuntary delight in traumatic events. He also redefines the debate concerning the politics of Wordsworth's poetry: disputing recent critics who claim that Wordsworth retreated from history into a poetry of the self, Collings argues instead that the very notion of the solitary, autobiographical subject derived from Wordsworth's sense of cultural trauma. The suspect dimension of Wordsworth's poetry, Collings concludes, is not its retreat from history but rather its claim that history is disaster.

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Bernadette Cunningham

"There was Something about the form and substance of the Annals of the Four Masters, compiled in the 1630s, that allowed them to become accepted as an authentic, reliable and comprehensive record of Gaelic society. Drawing on a rich heritage of manuscript sources on Irish history, these annals have long been regarded as an essential element of the cultural capital of a community that valued its Gaelic past. The Four Masters' approach to making their own annals conveys their regard for the older written records that had preserved for them, in manuscript, the history of their ancestors." "This study surveys the scholarly and political context, both Irish and European, that inspired the annalists, reconstructing the networks of professional expertise and patronage that contributed to the pursuit of scholarship about the Irish past. The original manuscripts of these annals are used to illuminate how the annalists collaborated in the production and revision of their magnum opus, while comparison with the extant source texts consulted by the annalists reveals their priorities and their understanding of the world in which they lived." "Geoffrey Keating's Foras Feasa ar Eirinn was among the most popular and influential Irish histories ever written. It offered a sense of ireland, of Irishness, and of Carholicism that had wide appeal. The work has long been valued for its mastery of the Irish language and its attractive literary style, yet its significance as history has been ignored. This innovative book evluates Keating's role as both historian and theologian, providing an imaginative interdisciplinary analysis of the entire range of Keating's writing and of the social circumstances and intellectual influences that moulded his world." "The world of scribes, translators, publishers and readers of Keating's works are part of this historiographical assessment of how ideas were transmitted to later generations. Geoffrey Keating's intellectual legacy in influencing perceptions of Irishness has been profound, not least as the populariser of the idea of a s̀pecial relationship' between Carholicism and irishness. This is an important, original study of the cultural, social and intellectual world of Ireland's most influential seventeenth-century writer." "Àn important book which offers an ambitious and wide-ranging analysis of a vitally important figure and his writings'" "This volume examines all aspects of the Irish Franciscans and their impact in Ireland and on the Continent. It includes chronological accounts of their history from 1534 to 1990 and thematic studies on their legacy in historical writings, hagiography, philosophy, Irish literature, missionary work, art and architecture. The volume also covers the history of the Poor Clares and the Secular. Franciscan Order in Ireland. Particular attention is given to the history and legacy of St Anthony's College Louvain, founded by the Irish Franciscans in 1607"--Jacket.

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Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities is a historical novel published in 1859 by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette, his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie whom he had never met. The story is set against the conditions that led up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. In the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction, critic Don D'Ammassa argues that it is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being imprisoned or killed. As Dickens's best-known work of historical fiction, A Tale of Two Cities is said to be one of the best-selling novels of all time. In 2003, the novel was ranked 63rd on the BBC's The Big Read poll. The novel has been adapted for film, television, radio, and the stage, and has continued to influence popular culture.

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Adalaide Morris

"The writing of H.D. is so linguistically rich and multilayered in structure that it has had almost as many interpretations as it has interpreters, from Freudians to feminists, from classicists to postmodernists. In How to Live/What to Do, however, Adalaide Morris removes the work of this iconic poet, dramatist, and novelist from compartments into which it has historically been placed. As she examines the "ongoingness" of H.D.'s writing, Morris makes an eloquent and compelling case for a consideration of poems - all poems - as forms of cultural mediation, instructive historical documents that engage the reader in wide-ranging contemporary debates and use their acoustical richness to generate tangible cultural effects."--Jacket.