"What would you do if you know you could not fail?" These words, attributed to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, have inspired tens of millions to face their fears and dare to follow their hearts. This can-do compendium is a veritable tool kit for transforming readers from reticent to role model. From the authors of Living Life as a Thank You, this volume presents true stories of ordinary people with extraordinary fortitude.Authors Mary Beth Sammons and Nina Lesowitz have gone...

This collection of nine performance pieces reflects the inspirational words of Margaret Mead, who said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Together, these performances memorialize the diversity, beauty, and fragility of our planet.Poet Terry Tempest Williams talks about the peregrine falcon; Larry Cox talks about the rainforests; poet Diane Ackerman reads from her work The Whale in Moonlig...

This volume, growing out of the celebrated turn toward history in literary criticism, showcases some of the best new historical work being done today in textual theory, literary history, and cultural criticism. The collection brings together for the first time key representativesfrom various schools of historicist scholarship, including leading critics whose work has helped define new historicism. The essays illuminate literary periods ranging from Anglo-Saxon to postmodern, a variety of l...

Right-wing governments all over the globe seek to define enemies for their citizens, often singling out the most vulnerable among them. Before his re-election at the close of 2024, Donald Trump in the United States declared that his political critics, many of whom belong to marginalized groups, are his enemies, disturbingly calling them "The Enemy Within." Rainy Weather Days embraces this title for its third volume in the spirit of resistance.Part 1 of volume 3 comprises pieces acc...

The first issue of Rainy Weather Days offers poetry and prose about being yourself, connecting with your inner child, and what it means to grow and age.

This issue explores love through a prismatic lens in works of science fiction, fantasy, even horror. "Our Better Angels" asks what it means to be human, and you will be surprised at the answers each author provides. Approximately 122 pages.

How Literature Works is an indispensable book for any reader seeking a greater appreciation of their favorite novel, poem, or play. It offers a lively and straightforward guide to literary thinking. With a series of compact essays, the renowned literary critic John Sutherland--widely admired for his wit and clear reasoning--strips away the obscurity and pretension of literary study. His book offers concise definitions and clear examples of the fifty concepts that all book lovers s...

Literary Analysis: The Basics is an insightful introduction to analysing a wide range of literary forms. Providing a clear outline of the methodologies employed in twenty-first century literary analysis, it introduces readers to the genres, canons, terms, issues, critical approaches, and contexts that affect the analysis of any text. It addresses such questions as:What counts as literature?Is analysis a dissection?How do gender, race, class and cu...

More than fifty years after the publication of Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye remains one of Canada's most influential intellectuals. This reappraisal reasserts the relevance of his work to the study of literature and illuminates its fruitful intersection with a variety of other fields, including film, cultural studies, linguistics, and feminism. Many of the contributors draw upon the early essays, correspondence, and diaries recently published as part of the Collected Wo...

A twenty-first century version of Roger Fowler’s 1973 Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms, this latest edition of The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms is the most up-to-date guide to critical and theoretical concepts available to students of literature at all levels.With over forty newly commissioned entries, this essential reference book includes:an exhaustive range of entries, covering such topics as genre, form, cultural theory and ...

As defining as Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, and Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education were to the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, respectively, Marjorie Garber’s The Use and Abuse of Literature is to our times.Even as the decline of the reading of literature, as argued by the National Endowment for the Arts, proceeds in our culture, Garber (“One of the most powerful women in the academic w...

Stories offer us some of the richest and most enduring insights into the human condition and have preoccupied philosophy since Aristotle. On Stories presents in clear and compelling style just why narrative has this power over us and argues that the unnarrated life is not worth living. Drawing on the work of James Joyce, Sigmund Freud's patient 'Dora' and the case of Oscar Schindler, Richard Kearney skilfully illuminates how stories not only entertain us but can determine our live...