Basing his contention on two different lines of argument, Michael Bryson posits that John Milton-possibly the most famous 'Christian' poet in English literary history-was, in fact, an atheist. First, based on his association with Arian ideas (denial of the doctrine of the Trinity), his argument for the de Deo theory of creation (which puts him in line with the materialism of Spinoza and Hobbes), and his Mortalist argument that the human soul dies with the human body, Bryson argues that Mil...

Toronto in the twenty-first century: At night, a beacon on a lonely ancient lake, a drainage pond from the last ice age. In the daytime, a bulwark of glass, glinting in the radiant sun. Joe, Mary, and her cat, Sam, sit in a lakeside condo, trapped by a crazed, mysterious sniper. What has become of their lives? What has become of their city? What has become of their century? As the situation begins to unravel, Mary finds herself wondering, “What would Margaret Atwood do?”

The exciting new book argues for a renewed emphasis on humanism--contrary to the trend of post-humanism, or what Neema Parvini calls "the anti-humanism" of the last several decades of literary and theoretical scholarship. In this trail-blazing study, Michael Bryson argues for this renewal of perspective by covering literature written in different languages, times, and places, calling for a return to a humanism, which focuses on literary characters and their psychological and existential st...

This book is a history of love and the challenge love offers to the laws and customs of its times and places, as told through poetry from the Song of Songs to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It is also an account of the critical reception afforded to such literature, and the ways in which criticism has attempted to stifle this challenge.Bryson and Movsesian argue that the poetry they explore celebrates and reinvents the love the troubadour poets of the eleventh and twelfth cen...

The Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature provides readers with a comprehensive reassessment of the value of humanism in an intellectual landscape. Offering contributions by leading international scholars, this volume seeks to define literature as a core expressive form and an essential constitutive element of newly reformulated understandings of humanism.While the value of humanism has recently been dominated by anti-humanist and post-humanist perspectives which ...

The work of John Charles Fremont, Richard Byrd, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, John Wesley Powell, Susan Cooper, Rachel Carson, and Loren Eiseley represents a widely divergent body of writing. Yet despite their range of genres—including exploration narratives, technical reports, natural histories, scientific autobiographies, fictional utopias, nature writing, and popular scientific literature—these seven authors produced strikingly connected representations of nature and the practice of science...

In Michael Bryson's Survival, a couple sit in a lakeside Toronto condo, trapped by a crazed, mysterious sniper. The Lesson presents a self-absorbed wedding DJ as the newest addition to Jessica Westheads trademark cast of offbeat protagonists. In Laure Baudot's In the Afternoon, a babysitter's envy and its fallout come to the fore when a former client is accused of a crime, and she must decide whether to help exonerate him. In Mui'n by Nancy Branch, a Mig...

Isaac Newton's influence on our world is immense. He formulated the theory of gravity, devised a radical new theory of light and created a calculus that would revolutionize mathematics. His theory of matter in motion sparked the Industrial Revolution. But there was far more to Newton even than these great discoveries.Opening with an informative foreword by the bestselling author of The Body Bill Bryson, the book is then divided into two parts: a biographical essay that provides a c...

Imagined by one of the world's foremost Newton scholars, this fictionalized conversation presents the essential biography of one of the greatest scientific minds of all time.Isaac Newton's influence on our world is immense. He formulated the theory of gravity, devised a radical new theory of light and created a calculus that would revolutionize mathematics. His theory of matter in motion sparked the Industrial Revolution. But there was far more to Newton even than these great disco...

In the rugged Nepisiguit River region of northern New Brunswick, two hunters face off. One is local sports lodge employee Danny Knockwood, a Mi’gmaw guide with a withered hand. The other is Mui’n, a one-eared black bear battling his inexorable hunger. When Danny is charged by the lodge owner to hunt down the bear that is frightening guests at the salmon pools, his personal values come into sharp conflict with his commitment to the task. The resulting confrontation tests both his physical s...

A man in the throes of a break-up is selling all of his possessions on Kijiji and Craigslist. Greg’s couch, his VHS tapes, obsolete desktop computer, and cow-shaped clock – it all must go. Between pot smoking, pizza eating, and watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, he meets with would-be buyers, taking his old life apart piece by discount piece in order to figure out what went wrong.

The sleepy town of Arbford is a house of cards, and Betty is the sudden gust of wind that unknowingly knocks it to the ground. In this insightful tale, where each of the men is called Mike, and each of their wives have a different name, Betty discovers that finding somewhere to call home isn’t easy. Fun, emotional, and intelligent, Mike Mike Mike Mike is a modern-day fable with a bit of Desperate Housewives thrown in for good measure.“In this cautionary suburban fairy tale...