The making of Sikh scripture

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Lawrence S. Rainey

A Poem Containing History offers nine essays that examine Pound's major poem from a historical and contextual perspective, in which the work's textual development is brought to center stage. The result is a significant reconsideration not just a Pound's achievement, but of modernist poetics and its relations with history. The contributors, all major scholars, examine The Cantos from their beginnings in the late 1910s to their inconclusive ending with Pound's death in 1972. Together the essays reconstruct the many contexts in which Pound lived and wrote, and how these affected the evolution of his most important work. Several essays offer comprehensive surveys of the text's publication history, while most examine the development of particular groups of cantos that were produced in succeeding decades. Repeatedly the essays show that Pound's poem was an unstable work in process, one that readily accommodated input from a variety of agents other than Pound himself, and one that may ultimately have escaped his control altogether.

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James C. Bulman

This collection of essays brings a full range of contemporary critical perspectives to bear upon the practical questions of performing Shakespeare. It will be of particular interest to students and teachers of theatre and literary theory.

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Margaret R. Parker

The story of a well-educated slave girl who exchanges learning for riches was composed in Arabic in Islamic Baghdad between the ninth and eleventh centuries and retold in three other languages and cultures during the next eight centuries. Remarkable for its longevity, popularity and the positive way it presents its eponymous heroine, it describes the way in which she rescues her master from poverty by defeating several learned men in public debate in front of the caliph or king. The tale is extant in some editions of The Thousand and One Nights, Arabic and Castilian manuscripts from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, numerous Spanish and Portuguese prints from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and later chapbook versions. In America it was incorporated into some of the Maya books of Chilam Balam, and in Brazil it was adapted to the popular Iibro de cordel verse format. . This study presents Castilian manuscript and printed versions of the text and a Brazilian verse version, along with English translations. It also explores the complex transmission history of the story; develops a theory for its reception and popularity in several cultures; and considers it for the first time in the context of the Thousand and One Nights and Spanish and Portuguese popular literature.

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Nathan Miller

As readable as fiction, as timely as today's headlines, this authoritative, concise history of the U.S. Navy traces the development of American seapower from the raggle-taggle Continental Navy of 1775 to current efforts to deploy strategic and tactical naval innovations for the twenty-first century. Originally published in 1977 and revised and updated twice, this book has come to be recognized as the standard history of the Navy, treasured by midshipmen at the Naval Academy and valued by general readers looking for a brief but inclusive study. In telling the story of the Navy, author Nathan Miller describes not only its ships and weapons but the role played by its men and women in the creation and protection of the United States. This new third edition includes enhanced coverage of the Marine Corps.