Disturbing Nature in Narrative Literature

Disturbing Nature in Narrative Literature PDF Author: Philip Armstrong
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040222498
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Disturbing Nature in Narrative Literature identifies and analyses encounters with unexpected, disconcerting, and unsettling aspects of the natural world, as these have been represented across a wide range of literary texts. It includes in‐depth discussion of both familiar and less familiar works from the British, American, and European literary traditions, and from the Classical period to today. The motifs discussed include earthquakes, forests, storms, animals, and oceanic depth, and the writers include Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, Voltaire, Heinrich von Kleist, Herman Melville, H.G. Wells, J.R.R. Tolkien, Gabriel García Márquez, José Saramago, Margaret Atwood, and Annie Proulx. Rich in both close textual analysis and contextual discussion, Disturbing Nature in Narrative Literature offers a vivid introduction to several topical approaches to literary‐critical analysis, including ecocriticism, new materialism, affect theory, and human‐animal studies, thereby demonstrating how literature shapes and is shaped by our response to the pressing questions of our time.

Disturbing Nature in Narrative Literature

Disturbing Nature in Narrative Literature PDF Author: Philip Armstrong
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040222498
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
Disturbing Nature in Narrative Literature identifies and analyses encounters with unexpected, disconcerting, and unsettling aspects of the natural world, as these have been represented across a wide range of literary texts. It includes in‐depth discussion of both familiar and less familiar works from the British, American, and European literary traditions, and from the Classical period to today. The motifs discussed include earthquakes, forests, storms, animals, and oceanic depth, and the writers include Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Shakespeare, Aphra Behn, Voltaire, Heinrich von Kleist, Herman Melville, H.G. Wells, J.R.R. Tolkien, Gabriel García Márquez, José Saramago, Margaret Atwood, and Annie Proulx. Rich in both close textual analysis and contextual discussion, Disturbing Nature in Narrative Literature offers a vivid introduction to several topical approaches to literary‐critical analysis, including ecocriticism, new materialism, affect theory, and human‐animal studies, thereby demonstrating how literature shapes and is shaped by our response to the pressing questions of our time.

Man V. Nature

Man V. Nature PDF Author: Diane Cook
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062333127
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
A refreshingly imaginative, daring debut collection of stories that illuminates with audacious wit the complexity of human behavior, and the veneer of civilization over our darkest urges. Told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, these stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive, but survive. In "Girl on Girl," a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. An insatiable temptress pursues the one man she can't have in "Meteorologist Dave Santana." And in the title story, a long-fraught friendship comes undone when three buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on. Below the quotidian surface of Diane Cook's worlds lurks an unexpected surreality that reveals our most curious, troubling, and bewildering behavior. Other stories explore situations pulled directly from the wild, imposing on human lives the danger, tension, and precariousness of the natural world: a pack of "not-needed" boys takes refuge in a murky forest where they compete against one another for their next meal; an alpha male is pursued through city streets by murderous rivals and desirous women; helpless newborns are snatched from their suburban yards by a man who stalks them. Through these characters Cook asks: What is at the root of our most heartless, selfish impulses? Why are people drawn together in such messy, needful ways? When the unexpected intrudes upon the routine, what do we discover about ourselves? As entertaining as it is dangerous, this accomplished collection explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized, where nature acts as a catalyst for human drama and lays bare our vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.

Animal Remains

Animal Remains PDF Author: Sarah Bezan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000506487
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The dream of humanism is to cleanly discard of humanity’s animal remains along with its ecological embeddings, evolutionary heritages and futures, ontogenies and phylogenies, sexualities and sensualities, vulnerabilities and mortalities. But, as the contributors to this volume demonstrate, animal remains are everywhere and so animals remain everywhere. Animal remains are food, medicine, and clothing; extractive resources and traces of animals’ lifeworlds and ecologies; they are sites of political conflict and ontological fear, fetishized visual signs and objects of trade, veneration, and memory; they are biotechnological innovations and spill-over viruses. To make sense of the material afterlives of animals, this book draws together multispecies perspectives from literary criticism and theory, cultural studies, anthropology and ethnography, photographic and film history, and contemporary art practice to offer the first synoptic account of animal remains. Interpreting them in all their ubiquity, diversity, and persistence, Animal Remains reveals posthuman relations between human and non-human communities of the living and the dead, on timescales of decades, centuries, and millennia.

Dialogues with the Devil

Dialogues with the Devil PDF Author: Taylor Caldwell
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150404293X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
From a #1 New York Times–bestselling author: Lucifer and the Archangel Michael debate the fate of humanity in the final nights before the apocalypse. Upon the end of days, Lucifer, the Fallen One, that Infernal of Infernals and Murderer of Hope, wonders if his Father will bother to raise another race after Armageddon. After all, he’ll only have to tempt them—again—to certain death. Their choice, not his. On God’s behalf, Archangel Michael responds. So begins a series of letters between two brothers, at once cordial and combative, about their purpose, their fears, their familial estrangement, and their Father’s great folly: the human race. Equally defensive, unrepentant, objective, and, for a time, amused, they challenge each other on science and spirituality, physical love and emotional love, the crucifixion and the crimes committed by man. They deliberate the virtues of empathy and vengeance, redemption and punishment, and the laws of the Bible versus its lies. Their civil discourse soon becomes a heated trial of wills. Based on a close reading of the Old and New Testaments, Dialogues with the Devil was conceived by author Taylor Caldwell “to give Lucifer his day in court.” A dramatic and insightful examination of family, morality, and faith, it is a singular work of fiction from “a wonderful storyteller” and one of twentieth-century America’s most popular and prolific authors (A. Scott Berg, National Book Award–winning author of Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Taylor Caldwell including rare images from the author’s estate.

Avenging Nature

Avenging Nature PDF Author: Eduardo Valls Oyarzun
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793621454
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
“Nature, thou art my goddess”—Edmund’s bold assertion in King Lear could easily inspire and, at the same time, function as a lamentation of the inadequate respect of nature in culture. In this volume, international experts provide multidisciplinary exploration of the insubordinate representations of nature in modern and contemporary literature and art. The work foregrounds the need to reassess how nature is already, and has been for a while, striking back against human domination. From the perspective of literary studies, art, history, media studies, ethics and philosophy, and ethnology and anthropology, Avenging Nature highlights the need of assessing insurgent discourses that—converging with counter-discourses of race, gender or class—realize the empowerment of nature from its subaltern position. Acknowledging the argument that cultural representations of nature establish a relationship of domination and exploitation of human discourse over nonhuman reality and that, in consequence, our regard for nature as humanist critics is instrumental and anthropocentric, the present volume advocates for the view that the time has come to finally perceive nature’s vengeance and to critically probe into nature’s ongoing revenge against the exploitation of culture.

The Seer of Possibilities and Other Disturbing Tales

The Seer of Possibilities and Other Disturbing Tales PDF Author: Thomas O
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"A great collection of creepy stories."-Matthew Brockmeyer, author of Kind Nepenthe Sometimes, otherworldly beings reach out in strange and mysterious ways. They may have a request for you to fulfill, or simply take pleasure in terrifying you senseless. If you're lucky, you might even live to tell the tale... A man receives enigmatic messages from a supernatural entity, embarking on a series of tasks that promise rewards but come at a great cost. A mysterious man invites two friends into his world of art and photography, encouraging them to capture images that defy the rules. As an amputee's pain intensifies, the connection between his phantom arm and an unsolved disappearance becomes increasingly ominous. An interstellar crew member's fight for survival turns deadly as he becomes entangled in a sadistic game on an isolated planet. These and other tales will enthrall you on one page and scare you on the next. Praise for The Seer of Possibilities: "Thomas O. clearly has a gift for short fiction. Every single story in this collection was a home run..."-Lucretia Stanhope, author of Blessedly Bound "Just loved it!"-Sandra C. Lopez, author of Single Chicas "A page turner with a high creep factor."-C.A. Anderson, author of Mistaken Identity "Solid premises and truly twisted endings."-Gene Kendall, author of Black Hat Blues "Highly recommended for short story readers who enjoy speculative fiction."-D. Wallace Peach, author of Catlings Bane "Well-executed with clever twists and plenty of here-to-keep-ya-awake darkness. If you're looking for a spooky read this Halloween, give it a go if you dare."-Angela Panayotopulos, author of The Wake Up "Easy to read in the best sense of the word... a variety of themes, settings and characters I haven't witnessed since enjoying the work of Ray Bradbury and Jason Werbeloff."-Tom G.H. Adams, author of Mycophoria "Reading this book took me right back to my childhood when I used to go to the library in search of ghost story anthologies... I felt all the same emotions I felt when I was a child peaking around the corner into the realm of the spooky."-Greta Cribbs, author of Original Sin

Last Days

Last Days PDF Author: Brian Evenson
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566894247
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
"The deceptively simple prose keeps the book brisk and even gripping as its puzzles grow more craggy and complex. This is Evenson's singular, Poe-like gift: He writes with intelligence and a steady hand, even when his characters decide to lop their own limbs off."—Time Out New York When Kline is kidnapped by a dark sect that believes amputation brings you closer to God, he's tasked with uncovering who murdered their leader. Will he uncover the truth in time to save himself, take on the mantle of prophet, or destroy all he sees with a rain of biblical violence?

The Face of Nature

The Face of Nature PDF Author: Garth Tissol
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400864615
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
In these reflections on the mercurial qualities of style in Ovid's Meta-morphoses, Garth Tissol contends that stylistic features of the ever-shifting narrative surface, such as wordplay, narrative disruption, and the self-conscious reworking of the poetic tradition, are thematically significant. It is the style that makes the process of reading the work a changing, transformative experience, as it both embodies and reflects the poem's presentation of the world as defined by instability and flux. Tissol deftly illustrates that far from being merely ornamental, style is as much a site for interpretation as any other element of Ovid's art. In the first chapter, Tissol argues that verbal wit and wordplay are closely linked to Ovidian metamorphoses. Wit challenges the ordinary conceptual categories of Ovid's readers, disturbing and extending the meanings and references of words. Thereby it contributes on the stylistic level to the readers' apprehension of flux. On a larger scale, parallel disturbances occur in the progress of narratives. In the second and third chapters, the author examines surprise and abrupt alteration of perspective as important features of narrative style. We experience reading as a transformative process not only in the characteristic indirection and unpredictability of Ovid's narrative but also in the memory of his predecessors. In the fourth chapter, Tissol shows how Ovid subsumes Vergil's Aeneid into the Metamorphoses in an especially rich allusive exploitation, one which contrasts Vergil's aetiological themes with those of his own work. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Disturbing Divine Behavior

Disturbing Divine Behavior PDF Author: Eric A. Seibert
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 145140770X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
How should we understand biblical texts where God is depicted as acting irrationally, violently, or destructively? If we distance ourselves from disturbing portrayals of God, how should we understand the authority of Scripture? How does the often wrathful God portrayed in the Old Testament relate to the God of love proclaimed in the New Testament? Is that contrast even accurate? Disturbing Divine Behavior addresses these perennially vexing questions for the student of the Bible. Eric A. Seibert calls for an engaged and discerning reading of the Old Testament that distinguishes the particular literary and theological goals achieved through narrative characterizations of God from the rich understanding of the divine to which the Old Testament as a whole points. Providing illuminating reflections on theological reading as well, this book will be a welcome resource for any readers who puzzle over disturbing representations of God in the Bible.

To be Read at Dusk

To be Read at Dusk PDF Author: Charles Dickens
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description