For the first time in a thousand years, Americans are experiencing a reversal in lifespan. Despite living in one of the safest and most secure eras in human history, one in five adults suffers from anxiety as does one-third of adolescents. Nearly half of the US population is overweight or obese and one-third of Americans suffer from chronic pain—the highest level in the world. In the United States, fatalities due to prescription pain medications now surpass those of heroin and cocaine comb...

**Earn College Credit with REA’s Test Prep for CLEP HumanitiesEverything you need to pass the exam and get the college credit you deserve.**REA leads the way in helping students pass their College Board CLEP exams and earn college credit while reducing their tuition costs.With 25+ years of experience in test prep for the College-Level Examination Program (CLEP), REA is your trusted source for the most up-to-date test-aligned content. Whether you’re an adult ...

A wide-ranging collection of essays on the importance and meaning of literature by "one of the most influential thinkers of our time" ( Los Angeles Times).In this collection of essays and addresses delivered over the course of his long and celebrated career, Umberto Eco seeks "to understand the chemistry of [his] passion" for the word. From musings on Ptolemy and "the force of the false" to reflections on the experimental writing of Borges and Joyce, Eco's...

The bestselling Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms provides clear and concise definitions of the most troublesome literary terms, from abjection to zeugma. It is an essential reference tool for students of literature in any language. Now expanded and in its fourth edition, it includes increased coverage of new terms from modern critical and theoretical movements, such as feminism, schools of American poetry, Spanish verse forms, life writing, and...

A major addition to the literature of poetry, Edward Hirsch’s sparkling new work is a compilation of forms, devices, groups, movements, isms, aesthetics, rhetorical terms, and folklore—a book that all readers, writers, teachers, and students of poetry will return to over and over.Hirsch has delved deeply into the poetic traditions of the world, returning with an inclusive, international compendium. Moving gracefully from the bards of ancient Greece to the revolutionaries of Latin A...

A Poet’s Glossary was an extraordinary achievement that continues to stand as a definitive source for poets and poetry lovers alike. Here, The Essential Poet’s Glossary gleans the very best from that extraordinary volume."An instant classic that belongs on the bookshelf of every serious poet and literature student."—Washington PostChancellor of the Academy of American Poets Edward Hirsch has compiled poetic terms spanning centurie...

America grows older yet stays focused on its young. Whatever hill we try to climb, we're "over" it by fifty and should that hill involve entertainment or athletics we're finished long before. But if younger is better, it doesn't appear that youngest is best: we want our teachers, doctors, generals, and presidents to have reached a certain age. In context after context and contest after contest, we're more than a little conflicted about elders of the tribe; when is it right to honor them, a...

Guy Davenport demonstrates his unparalleled critical vision as he interprets art, literature, and cultureIn this collection of 20 essays, Guy Davenport applies his insightful gaze and critical wisdom to topics including modern art and the effects of the automobile on contemporary society. His work ranges from "What Are Those Monkeys Doing?" in which he links the paintings of Rousseau to the writings of Rimbaud and Flaubert, to "Imaginary Americas," a survey of the d...

Verse and drama have provided outlets for emotive expression and the creative impulse for centuries. Poignant, inspiring, and thought-provoking, plays and poems spoken or written in any language help reinterpret reality and evoke some of humanity’s most profound truths. The terms culled in this volume describe many of the most potent elements of language—those that venture beyond the realm of prose and invoke the power of cadence, lyricism, and drama to recount all aspects of the human con...

A depressive illness or a passing feeling? Mental detachment or a precursor to genius? Melancholy is a critical part of what it is to be human, yet everything from Prozac to self-help psychology books seems intent on removing all signs of sadness from contemporary existence. A Field Guide to Melancholy surveys this ambivalent concept and takes a journey through the articulation of melancholy in a variety of languages, from the Russian toska of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin to ...

Get the most out of reading with this an engaging and fun guide to the deeper meanings in great works of literature!From the epic of Gilgamesh to Aristotle and Cicero, and from Shakespeare and the King James Bible to Wuthering Heights, War and Peace, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Nobel-winning lyrics of Bob Dylan, the world of literature is an integral part of our lives, but getting the most out of a great work can sometimes ...

Sir Frank Kermode, the British scholar, instructor, and author, was an inspired critic. Forms of Attention is based on a series of three lectures he gave on canon formation, or how we choose what art to value. The essay on Botticelli traces the artist's sudden popularity in the nineteenth century for reasons that have more to do with poetry than painting. In the second essay, Kermode reads Hamlet from a very modern angle, offering a useful (and playful) perspective for a contempor...