A Muse and a Maze

A Muse and a Maze PDF Author: Peter Turchi
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595341943
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
With his characteristic talent for finding the connections between writing and the stuff of our lives (most notably in his earlier hit Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer), Peter Turchi ventures into new, and even more surprising, territory. In A Muse and a Maze, Turchi draws out the similarities between writing and puzzle-making and its flip side, puzzle-solving. He teases out how mystery lies at the heart of all storytelling. And he uncovers the magic—the creation of credible illusion—that writers share with the likes of Houdini and master magicians. In Turchi’s associative narrative, we learn about the history of puzzles, their obsessive quality, and that Benjamin Franklin was a devotee of an ancient precursor of sudoku called Magic Squares. Applying this rich backdrop to the requirements of writing, Turchi reveals as much about the human psyche as he does about the literary imagination and the creative process. With the goal of giving writers new ways to think about their work and readers new ways to consider the books they encounter, A Muse and a Maze suggests ways in which every piece of writing is a kind of puzzle. The work argues that literary writing is defined, at least in part, by its embrace of mystery; offers tangrams as a model for the presentation of complex characters; compares a writer’s relationship to his or her narrator to magicians and wizards; offers the maze and the labyrinth as alternatives to the more common notion of the narrative line; and concludes with a discussion of how readers and writers, like puzzle solvers, not only tolerate but find pleasure in difficulty. While always balancing erudition with accessibility, Turchi examines the work of writers as various as A. A. Milne, Dashiell Hammett, Truman Capote, Anton Chekhov, Alison Bechdel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Antonya Nelson, Vladimir Nabokov, Charles D’Ambrosio, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro, Thomas Bernhard, and Mark Twain, elaborating and illuminating ways in which their works expand and deliver on the title’s double entendre, A Muse and a Maze. With 100 images that range from movie stills from Citizen Kane and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to examples of sudokus, crosswords, and other puzzles; from Norman Rockwell’s famous triple self-portrait to artwork by Charles Richie; and from historical arcana to today’s latest magic, A Muse and a Maze offers prose exposition, images, text quotations, and every available form of wisdom, leading the reader step-by-step through passages from stories and novels to demonstrate, with remarkable clarity, how writers evolve their eventual creations.

A Muse and a Maze

A Muse and a Maze PDF Author: Peter Turchi
Publisher: Trinity University Press
ISBN: 1595341943
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Get Book Here

Book Description
With his characteristic talent for finding the connections between writing and the stuff of our lives (most notably in his earlier hit Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer), Peter Turchi ventures into new, and even more surprising, territory. In A Muse and a Maze, Turchi draws out the similarities between writing and puzzle-making and its flip side, puzzle-solving. He teases out how mystery lies at the heart of all storytelling. And he uncovers the magic—the creation of credible illusion—that writers share with the likes of Houdini and master magicians. In Turchi’s associative narrative, we learn about the history of puzzles, their obsessive quality, and that Benjamin Franklin was a devotee of an ancient precursor of sudoku called Magic Squares. Applying this rich backdrop to the requirements of writing, Turchi reveals as much about the human psyche as he does about the literary imagination and the creative process. With the goal of giving writers new ways to think about their work and readers new ways to consider the books they encounter, A Muse and a Maze suggests ways in which every piece of writing is a kind of puzzle. The work argues that literary writing is defined, at least in part, by its embrace of mystery; offers tangrams as a model for the presentation of complex characters; compares a writer’s relationship to his or her narrator to magicians and wizards; offers the maze and the labyrinth as alternatives to the more common notion of the narrative line; and concludes with a discussion of how readers and writers, like puzzle solvers, not only tolerate but find pleasure in difficulty. While always balancing erudition with accessibility, Turchi examines the work of writers as various as A. A. Milne, Dashiell Hammett, Truman Capote, Anton Chekhov, Alison Bechdel, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Antonya Nelson, Vladimir Nabokov, Charles D’Ambrosio, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro, Thomas Bernhard, and Mark Twain, elaborating and illuminating ways in which their works expand and deliver on the title’s double entendre, A Muse and a Maze. With 100 images that range from movie stills from Citizen Kane and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to examples of sudokus, crosswords, and other puzzles; from Norman Rockwell’s famous triple self-portrait to artwork by Charles Richie; and from historical arcana to today’s latest magic, A Muse and a Maze offers prose exposition, images, text quotations, and every available form of wisdom, leading the reader step-by-step through passages from stories and novels to demonstrate, with remarkable clarity, how writers evolve their eventual creations.

10th Muse: Maze of the Minotaur

10th Muse: Maze of the Minotaur PDF Author: Darren G. Davis
Publisher: Storm
ISBN: 0966473744
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
10th Muse Volume One

The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages

The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages PDF Author: Penelope Reed Doob
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150173847X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Ancient and medieval labyrinths embody paradox, according to Penelope Reed Doob. Their structure allows a double perspective—the baffling, fragmented prospect confronting the maze-treader within, and the comprehensive vision available to those without. Mazes simultaneously assert order and chaos, artistry and confusion, articulated clarity and bewildering complexity, perfected pattern and hesitant process. In this handsomely illustrated book, Doob reconstructs from a variety of literary and visual sources the idea of the labyrinth from the classical period through the Middle Ages. Doob first examines several complementary traditions of the maze topos, showing how ancient historical and geographical writings generate metaphors in which the labyrinth signifies admirable complexity, while poetic texts tend to suggest that the labyrinth is a sign of moral duplicity. She then describes two common models of the labyrinth and explores their formal implications: the unicursal model, with no false turnings, found almost universally in the visual arts; and the multicursal model, with blind alleys and dead ends, characteristic of literary texts. This paradigmatic clash between the labyrinths of art and of literature becomes a key to the metaphorical potential of the maze, as Doob's examination of a vast array of materials from the classical period through the Middle Ages suggests. She concludes with linked readings of four "labyrinths of words": Virgil's Aeneid, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Dante's Divine Comedy, and Chaucer's House of Fame, each of which plays with and transforms received ideas of the labyrinth as well as reflecting and responding to aspects of the texts that influenced it. Doob not only provides fresh theoretical and historical perspectives on the labyrinth tradition, but also portrays a complex medieval aesthetic that helps us to approach structurally elaborate early works. Readers in such fields as Classical literature, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, comparative literature, literary theory, art history, and intellectual history will welcome this wide-ranging and illuminating book.

Masks of the Muse

Masks of the Muse PDF Author: Veronica Cummer
Publisher: Pendraig Publishing
ISBN: 0982031831
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Who is the Muse? Why do we need Her? How do we tap into that shining current of inspiration and create something never before seen, something beautiful and terrible, fantastical and infinitely real. The Muse is as vital to our lives today as She was in ancient times. She changes as we change and Her Arts are continually in flux, Arts that we simply cannot live without...or that we wouldn't want to. Among other things, they are tools to make and re-make our world even as we work with Fate to weave the web of life and death, of creation and destruction. Through four faces, four masks of the Muse, this book explores different aspects of inspiration, creativity, and magick. Aphrodite, Cerridwen, Ariadne, and the Lady of the Lake await--each to teach us of the Arts and what we are capable of at our very best. By the poetry, prayer, invocation, and ritual contained within we can come to know the Muse and so know ourselves and the gifts we all have within us that demand recognition and expression. The path of the Muse may not always be an easy or a safe one, but anything worth having is worth paying the price for. Who is the Muse? Who are we? This book is a journey, one that we must dare to take and dare to take hold of what is revealed.. As we must return to the well of memory, the depths of the ocean, and the currents below the earth, there to claim what was ours all along.

The Kid's Awesome Activity Book

The Kid's Awesome Activity Book PDF Author: Mike Lowery
Publisher: Workman Publishing
ISBN: 0761187189
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
Pure interactive fun between two covers! A book that begs to be doodled in with 96 wacky prompts, games, and crafts, and adorable creatures to boot, The Kid’s Awesome Activity Book is packed with activities that take delightful twists and turns, inviting kids to design, draw, and dream—and encouraging creativity on and off the page. Enter an ancient cave to decode a mummy’s message. Find your way through a beehive maze. Write a song for a cat rock band. Design a personalized spaceship—and so much more. Plus, plenty of goodies to return to again and again for hands-on play: paper dolls, finger puppets, bonus stickers, and a giant pullout poster designed to kindle curious minds and active imaginations. A great boredom-buster for travel or rainy days, and a fun birthday or holiday gift. From the author and illustrator of the Doodle Adventures® series and based on the Kid’s Awesome Activity Calendar, the book showcases Lowery’s inimitable quirky style and humor that clicks with all ages—get the whole family in on the fun!

The Late Hector Kipling

The Late Hector Kipling PDF Author: David Thewlis
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330538802
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Hector Kipling has everything to live for: he is a talented artist with loving parents, a beautiful girlfriend, dependable mates and good health. But when Kirk Church, one of his best friends, and a habitual painter of cutlery, announces that he may have a brain tumour, the prospect of a character-building bereavement, with all the attendant suffering and sympathy, is a little too difficult for Hector to resist. Will it make him a better artist? Will it make him as successful as his friend Lenny Snook, who fills limousines with blood and has just been nominated for the Turner Prize? As events begin to unravel it doesn't take long for Hector's charmed world to fall completely and irreparably apart. From settees to stalkers, con men to corpses, paranoid self-portraits to S&M, The Late Hector Kipling is an irreverent and candid exploration of life, death, art and everything in between. 'Wonderful entertainment . . . A funny and successful satire' Observer Review 'Exquisitely written with a warm heart and a wry wit, this is a stunning debut.' Elle 'David Thewlis has written an extraordinarily good novel, which is not only brilliant in its own right, but stands proudly beside his work as an actor, no mean boast.' Billy Connolly 'I laughed and laughed until I read my own name amongst the carnage of Thewlis's unfortunate characters. This book is a disgrace - it's mean, cruel and refreshingly cynical.' Jake Chapman

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 PDF Author: Nick Montfort
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262304570
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
A single line of code offers a way to understand the cultural context of computing. This book takes a single line of code—the extremely concise BASIC program for the Commodore 64 inscribed in the title—and uses it as a lens through which to consider the phenomenon of creative computing and the way computer programs exist in culture. The authors of this collaboratively written book treat code not as merely functional but as a text—in the case of 10 PRINT, a text that appeared in many different printed sources—that yields a story about its making, its purpose, its assumptions, and more. They consider randomness and regularity in computing and art, the maze in culture, the popular BASIC programming language, and the highly influential Commodore 64 computer.

Maze

Maze PDF Author: Matt Bialer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781646625338
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
Bialer's poem Maze takes the reader on a circuitous expedition exploring memories, reflections and shifting time and place. Compelling lines and phrases resurface over and again serving as a drumbeat egging the reader deeper into Bialer's journey of love for and loss of his wife. Facts and memories link "bandits and burial grounds' in Tombstone, Arizona to the Siege of Sarajevo, illuminating how painful the mere act of remembering can be. "Memories are like snipers". With the knowledge that life is fleeting, Maze keenly succeeds at reminding the reader of the sacredness of living in the present moment. -LORETTA OLECK, author of PAPER CHAINS In his beautiful and poignant elegy Maze poet Matt Bialer summons loving memories of his late wife Lenora to conjure the strain of Covid and politics, turning angst and sorrow into a song of life. -SEB DOUBINSKY, author of THE INVISIBLE and MISSING SIGNAL

The Hero Journey in Literature

The Hero Journey in Literature PDF Author: Evans Lansing Smith
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761805090
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
This book provides an overview of the hero journey theme in literature, from antiquity to the present, with a focus on the imagery of the rites of passage in human life (initiation at adolescence, mid-life, and death). This is the only book to focus on the major works of the literary tradition, detailing discussions of the hero journey in major literary texts. Included are chapters on the literature of Antiquity (Sumerian, Egyptian, Biblical, Greek, and Roman), the Middle Ages (with emphasis on the Arthurian Romance), the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Shakespeare, Milton, Marvell, Pope, Fielding, the Arabian Nights, and Alchemical Illustration), Romanticism and Naturalism (Coleridge, Selected Grimm's Tales, Bront%, Bierce, Whitman, Twain, Hawthorne, E.T.A. Hoffman, Rabindranath Tagore), and Modernism to Contemporary (Joyce, Gilman, Alifa Rifaat, Bellow, Lessing, Pynchon, Eudora Welty).

Houseboat on the Styx

Houseboat on the Styx PDF Author: A. F. Moritz
Publisher: Ekstasis Editions
ISBN: 9781896860398
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description
Two lovers find their houseboat stuck in a reedy marsh in Hades. What to do? A work of exhilarating range, Houseboat on the Styx finds in primal human wanderlust the mythological journey of the soul.