Author: Ryan La Sala
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1492682675
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Book Description
A B&N's YA Book Club Pick * Walmart Buzz Pick * Indie Next Pick * Book of the Month Club YA Box A "joyously, riotously queer" (Kirkus) young adult fantasy from debut author Ryan La Sala, Reverie is a wildly imaginative story about dreams becoming reality, perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Laini Taylor. A few weeks ago, Kane Montgomery was in an accident that robbed him of his memory. The only thing he knows for certain is that the police found him half-dead in the river. The world as he knows it feels different—reality seems different. And when strange things start happening around him, Kane isn't sure where to turn. And then three of his classmates show up, claiming to be his friends and the only people who can tell him what's truly going on. Kane doesn't know what to believe or who he can trust. But as he and the others are dragged into increasingly fantastical dream worlds drawn from imagination, it becomes clear that there is dark magic at work. Nothing in Kane's life is an accident, and only he can keep the world itself from unraveling. Reverie is an intricate and compelling LGBT young adult book about the secret worlds we hide within ourselves and what happens when they become real. Praise for Reverie: "This outstanding debut novel will light readers' imaginations on fire...Imaginative, bold, and full of queer representation, this is a must-purchase for YA collections."—School Library Journal *STARRED REVIEW* "This fantasy offers readers something wonderfully new and engaging...a gem of a novel that is as affirming as it is entertaining."—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books "The story's many LGBTQ characters are prominently represented and powerfully nuanced."—Publishers Weekly "A darkly imagined, riveting fantasy... thrilling."—Shelf Awareness "Joyously, riotously queer... The themes of creating one's own reality and fighting against the rules imposed by the world you're born into will ring powerfully true for many young readers."—Kirkus Reviews
Reverie
Author: Ryan La Sala
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1492682675
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Book Description
A B&N's YA Book Club Pick * Walmart Buzz Pick * Indie Next Pick * Book of the Month Club YA Box A "joyously, riotously queer" (Kirkus) young adult fantasy from debut author Ryan La Sala, Reverie is a wildly imaginative story about dreams becoming reality, perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Laini Taylor. A few weeks ago, Kane Montgomery was in an accident that robbed him of his memory. The only thing he knows for certain is that the police found him half-dead in the river. The world as he knows it feels different—reality seems different. And when strange things start happening around him, Kane isn't sure where to turn. And then three of his classmates show up, claiming to be his friends and the only people who can tell him what's truly going on. Kane doesn't know what to believe or who he can trust. But as he and the others are dragged into increasingly fantastical dream worlds drawn from imagination, it becomes clear that there is dark magic at work. Nothing in Kane's life is an accident, and only he can keep the world itself from unraveling. Reverie is an intricate and compelling LGBT young adult book about the secret worlds we hide within ourselves and what happens when they become real. Praise for Reverie: "This outstanding debut novel will light readers' imaginations on fire...Imaginative, bold, and full of queer representation, this is a must-purchase for YA collections."—School Library Journal *STARRED REVIEW* "This fantasy offers readers something wonderfully new and engaging...a gem of a novel that is as affirming as it is entertaining."—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books "The story's many LGBTQ characters are prominently represented and powerfully nuanced."—Publishers Weekly "A darkly imagined, riveting fantasy... thrilling."—Shelf Awareness "Joyously, riotously queer... The themes of creating one's own reality and fighting against the rules imposed by the world you're born into will ring powerfully true for many young readers."—Kirkus Reviews
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
ISBN: 1492682675
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Book Description
A B&N's YA Book Club Pick * Walmart Buzz Pick * Indie Next Pick * Book of the Month Club YA Box A "joyously, riotously queer" (Kirkus) young adult fantasy from debut author Ryan La Sala, Reverie is a wildly imaginative story about dreams becoming reality, perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Laini Taylor. A few weeks ago, Kane Montgomery was in an accident that robbed him of his memory. The only thing he knows for certain is that the police found him half-dead in the river. The world as he knows it feels different—reality seems different. And when strange things start happening around him, Kane isn't sure where to turn. And then three of his classmates show up, claiming to be his friends and the only people who can tell him what's truly going on. Kane doesn't know what to believe or who he can trust. But as he and the others are dragged into increasingly fantastical dream worlds drawn from imagination, it becomes clear that there is dark magic at work. Nothing in Kane's life is an accident, and only he can keep the world itself from unraveling. Reverie is an intricate and compelling LGBT young adult book about the secret worlds we hide within ourselves and what happens when they become real. Praise for Reverie: "This outstanding debut novel will light readers' imaginations on fire...Imaginative, bold, and full of queer representation, this is a must-purchase for YA collections."—School Library Journal *STARRED REVIEW* "This fantasy offers readers something wonderfully new and engaging...a gem of a novel that is as affirming as it is entertaining."—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books "The story's many LGBTQ characters are prominently represented and powerfully nuanced."—Publishers Weekly "A darkly imagined, riveting fantasy... thrilling."—Shelf Awareness "Joyously, riotously queer... The themes of creating one's own reality and fighting against the rules imposed by the world you're born into will ring powerfully true for many young readers."—Kirkus Reviews
The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume XIII: A Vision
Author: William Butler Yeats
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684807335
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 450
Book Description
The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume XIII: A Vision is part of a fourteen-volume series under the general editorship of eminent Yeats scholar George Bornstein and formerly the late Richard J. Finneran and George Mills Harper. One of the strangest works of literary modernism, A Vision is Yeats's greatest occult work. Edited by Yeats scholars Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, the volume presents the "system" of philosophy, psychology, history, and the life of the soul that Yeats and his wife George (née Hyde Lees) received and created by means of mediumistic experiments from 1917 through the early 1920s. Yeats obsessively revised the book, and the revised 1937 version is much more widely available than its predecessor. The original 1925 version of A Vision, poetic, unpolished, masked in fiction, and close to the excitement of the automatic writing that the Yeatses believed to be its supernatural origin, is presented here in a scholarly edition for the first time. The text, minimally corrected to retain the sense of the original, is extensively annotated, with particular attention paid to the relationship between the published book and its complex genetic materials. Indispensable to an understanding of the poet's late work and entrancing on its own merit, A Vision aims to be, all at once, a work of theoretical history, an esoteric philosophy, an aesthetic symbology, a psychological schema, and a sacred book. It is as difficult as it is essential reading for any student of Yeats.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684807335
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 450
Book Description
The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume XIII: A Vision is part of a fourteen-volume series under the general editorship of eminent Yeats scholar George Bornstein and formerly the late Richard J. Finneran and George Mills Harper. One of the strangest works of literary modernism, A Vision is Yeats's greatest occult work. Edited by Yeats scholars Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, the volume presents the "system" of philosophy, psychology, history, and the life of the soul that Yeats and his wife George (née Hyde Lees) received and created by means of mediumistic experiments from 1917 through the early 1920s. Yeats obsessively revised the book, and the revised 1937 version is much more widely available than its predecessor. The original 1925 version of A Vision, poetic, unpolished, masked in fiction, and close to the excitement of the automatic writing that the Yeatses believed to be its supernatural origin, is presented here in a scholarly edition for the first time. The text, minimally corrected to retain the sense of the original, is extensively annotated, with particular attention paid to the relationship between the published book and its complex genetic materials. Indispensable to an understanding of the poet's late work and entrancing on its own merit, A Vision aims to be, all at once, a work of theoretical history, an esoteric philosophy, an aesthetic symbology, a psychological schema, and a sacred book. It is as difficult as it is essential reading for any student of Yeats.
Yeats and English Renaissance Literature
Author: Wayne K Chapman
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349214027
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 323
Book Description
This book is the first to make extensive use of unpublished manuscripts to show how a period of English literature affected W.B.Yeats's development as a poet. Besides presenting a factual account of his acquaintance with English Renaissance writers based on evidence from his library and elsewhere, the study examines his response to numerous minor figures and several major ones - including Spenser, Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne and Milton.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349214027
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 323
Book Description
This book is the first to make extensive use of unpublished manuscripts to show how a period of English literature affected W.B.Yeats's development as a poet. Besides presenting a factual account of his acquaintance with English Renaissance writers based on evidence from his library and elsewhere, the study examines his response to numerous minor figures and several major ones - including Spenser, Jonson, Shakespeare, Donne and Milton.
From an Existential Vacuum to a Tragic Optimism
Author: Barbara A. Heavilin
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443863432
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
From an Existential Vacuum to a Tragic Optimism: The Search for Meaning and the Presence of God in Modern Literature employs a new theoretical approach to critical analysis: Victor Frankl’s logotherapy (from the Greek “logos” for word or reason and often related to divine wisdom), a unique form of existentialism. On the basis of his observations of the power of human endurance and transcendence – the discovery of meaning even in the midst of harrowing circumstances – Frankl diagnoses the malaise of the current age as an “existential vacuum,” a sense of meaninglessness. He suggests that a panacea for this malaise may be found in creativity, love, and moral choice – even when faced with suffering or death. He affirms that human beings may transcend this vacuum, discover meaning – or even ultimate meaning to be found in Ultimate Being, or God – and live with a sense of “tragic optimism.” This book observes both the current age’s “existential vacuum” – a malaise of emptiness and meaninglessness – and its longing for meaning and God as reflected in three genres: poetry, novel, and fantasy. Part I, “Reflections of God in the Poetic Vision,” addresses “tragic optimism” – hope when there seems to be no reason for hope – in poems by William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Part II, “American Angst: Emptiness and Possibility in John Steinbeck’s Major Novels,” presents a study of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and The Winter of Our Discontent – novels that together form a uniquely American epic trilogy. Together these novels tell the story of a nation’s avarice, corruption, and betrayal offset by magnanimity, heroism, and hospitality. Set against the backdrop of Frankl’s ways of finding meaning and fulfillment – all obliquely implying the felt presence of God – the characters are representative Every Americans, in whose lives are reflected a nation’s worst vices and best hopes. Part III, “A Tragic Optimism: The Triumph of Good in the Fantasy Worlds of Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling,” defines fantasy and science fiction as mirrors with which to view reality. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series are considered in the light of Frankl’s logotherapy – providing paths to meaning and the ultimate meaning to be found in God. In a postmodern, fragmented age, these works affirm a continuing vision of God (often through His felt absence) and, also, a most human yearning for meaning even when there seems to be none – providing, as Frankl maintains, “a tragic optimism.”
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443863432
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 207
Book Description
From an Existential Vacuum to a Tragic Optimism: The Search for Meaning and the Presence of God in Modern Literature employs a new theoretical approach to critical analysis: Victor Frankl’s logotherapy (from the Greek “logos” for word or reason and often related to divine wisdom), a unique form of existentialism. On the basis of his observations of the power of human endurance and transcendence – the discovery of meaning even in the midst of harrowing circumstances – Frankl diagnoses the malaise of the current age as an “existential vacuum,” a sense of meaninglessness. He suggests that a panacea for this malaise may be found in creativity, love, and moral choice – even when faced with suffering or death. He affirms that human beings may transcend this vacuum, discover meaning – or even ultimate meaning to be found in Ultimate Being, or God – and live with a sense of “tragic optimism.” This book observes both the current age’s “existential vacuum” – a malaise of emptiness and meaninglessness – and its longing for meaning and God as reflected in three genres: poetry, novel, and fantasy. Part I, “Reflections of God in the Poetic Vision,” addresses “tragic optimism” – hope when there seems to be no reason for hope – in poems by William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Part II, “American Angst: Emptiness and Possibility in John Steinbeck’s Major Novels,” presents a study of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and The Winter of Our Discontent – novels that together form a uniquely American epic trilogy. Together these novels tell the story of a nation’s avarice, corruption, and betrayal offset by magnanimity, heroism, and hospitality. Set against the backdrop of Frankl’s ways of finding meaning and fulfillment – all obliquely implying the felt presence of God – the characters are representative Every Americans, in whose lives are reflected a nation’s worst vices and best hopes. Part III, “A Tragic Optimism: The Triumph of Good in the Fantasy Worlds of Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling,” defines fantasy and science fiction as mirrors with which to view reality. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series are considered in the light of Frankl’s logotherapy – providing paths to meaning and the ultimate meaning to be found in God. In a postmodern, fragmented age, these works affirm a continuing vision of God (often through His felt absence) and, also, a most human yearning for meaning even when there seems to be none – providing, as Frankl maintains, “a tragic optimism.”
Yeats's Poetry, Drama, and Prose
Author: William Butler Yeats
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393974973
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 556
Book Description
This brand new collection, impeccably edited by James Pethica, presents a comprehensive selection of Yeats's major contributions in poetry, drama, prose fiction, autobiography, and criticism.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393974973
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 556
Book Description
This brand new collection, impeccably edited by James Pethica, presents a comprehensive selection of Yeats's major contributions in poetry, drama, prose fiction, autobiography, and criticism.
Irish Literature in Transition, 1940–1980: Volume 5
Author: Eve Patten
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108570747
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 704
Book Description
This volume explores the history of Irish writing between the Second World War (or the 'Emergency') in 1939 and the re-emergence of violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It situates modern Irish writing within the contexts of cultural transition and transnational connection, often challenging pre-existing perceptions of Irish literature in this period as stagnant and mundane. While taking into account the grip of Irish censorship and cultural nationalism during the mid-twentieth century, these essays identify an Irish literary culture stimulated by international political horizons and fully responsive to changes in publishing, readership, and education. The book combines valuable cultural surveys with focussed discussions of key literary moments, and of individual authors such as Seán O'Faoláin, Samuel Beckett, Edna O'Brien, and John McGahern.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108570747
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 704
Book Description
This volume explores the history of Irish writing between the Second World War (or the 'Emergency') in 1939 and the re-emergence of violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. It situates modern Irish writing within the contexts of cultural transition and transnational connection, often challenging pre-existing perceptions of Irish literature in this period as stagnant and mundane. While taking into account the grip of Irish censorship and cultural nationalism during the mid-twentieth century, these essays identify an Irish literary culture stimulated by international political horizons and fully responsive to changes in publishing, readership, and education. The book combines valuable cultural surveys with focussed discussions of key literary moments, and of individual authors such as Seán O'Faoláin, Samuel Beckett, Edna O'Brien, and John McGahern.
Yeats's Legacies
Author: Warwick Gould
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 178374457X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
The two great Yeats Family Sales of 2017 and the legacy of the Yeats family’s 80-year tradition of generosity to Ireland’s great cultural institutions provide the kaleidoscope through which these advanced research essays find their theme. Hannah Sullivan’s brilliant history of Yeats’s versecraft challenges Poundian definitions of Modernism; Denis Donoghue offers unique family memories of 1916 whilst tracing the political significance of the Easter Rising; Anita Feldman addresses Yeats’s responses to the Rising’s appropriation of his symbols and myths, the daring artistry of his ritual drama developed from Noh, his poetry of personal utterance, and his vision of art as a body reborn rather than a treasure preserved amid the testing of the illusions that hold civilizations together in ensuing wars. Warwick Gould looks at Yeats as founding Senator in the new Free State, and his valiant struggle against the literary censorship law of 1929 (with its present-day legacy of Irish anti-blasphemy law still presenting a constitutional challenge). Drawing on Gregory Estate documents, James Pethica looks at the evictions which preceded Yeats’s purchase of Thoor Ballylee in Galway; Lauren Arrington looks back at Yeats, Ezra Pound, and the Ghosts of The Winding Stair (1929) in Rapallo. Having co-edited both versions of A Vision, Catherine Paul offers some profound reflections on ‘Yeats and Belief’. Grevel Lindop provides a pioneering view of Yeats’s impact on English mystical verse and on Charles Williams who, while at Oxford University Press, helped publish the Oxford Book of Modern Verse. Stanley van der Ziel looks at the presence of Shakespeare in Yeats’s Purgatory. William H. O’Donnell examines the vexed textual legacy of his late work, On the Boiler while Gould considers the challenge Yeats’s intentionalism posed for once-fashionable post-structuralist editorial theory. John Kelly recovers a startling autobiographical short story by Maud Gonne. While nine works of current biographical, textual and literary scholarship are reviewed, Maud Gonne is the focus of debate for two reviewers, as are Eva Gore-Booth, Constance and Casimir Markievicz, Rudyard Kipling, David Jones, T. S. Eliot and his presence on the radio.
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 178374457X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 370
Book Description
The two great Yeats Family Sales of 2017 and the legacy of the Yeats family’s 80-year tradition of generosity to Ireland’s great cultural institutions provide the kaleidoscope through which these advanced research essays find their theme. Hannah Sullivan’s brilliant history of Yeats’s versecraft challenges Poundian definitions of Modernism; Denis Donoghue offers unique family memories of 1916 whilst tracing the political significance of the Easter Rising; Anita Feldman addresses Yeats’s responses to the Rising’s appropriation of his symbols and myths, the daring artistry of his ritual drama developed from Noh, his poetry of personal utterance, and his vision of art as a body reborn rather than a treasure preserved amid the testing of the illusions that hold civilizations together in ensuing wars. Warwick Gould looks at Yeats as founding Senator in the new Free State, and his valiant struggle against the literary censorship law of 1929 (with its present-day legacy of Irish anti-blasphemy law still presenting a constitutional challenge). Drawing on Gregory Estate documents, James Pethica looks at the evictions which preceded Yeats’s purchase of Thoor Ballylee in Galway; Lauren Arrington looks back at Yeats, Ezra Pound, and the Ghosts of The Winding Stair (1929) in Rapallo. Having co-edited both versions of A Vision, Catherine Paul offers some profound reflections on ‘Yeats and Belief’. Grevel Lindop provides a pioneering view of Yeats’s impact on English mystical verse and on Charles Williams who, while at Oxford University Press, helped publish the Oxford Book of Modern Verse. Stanley van der Ziel looks at the presence of Shakespeare in Yeats’s Purgatory. William H. O’Donnell examines the vexed textual legacy of his late work, On the Boiler while Gould considers the challenge Yeats’s intentionalism posed for once-fashionable post-structuralist editorial theory. John Kelly recovers a startling autobiographical short story by Maud Gonne. While nine works of current biographical, textual and literary scholarship are reviewed, Maud Gonne is the focus of debate for two reviewers, as are Eva Gore-Booth, Constance and Casimir Markievicz, Rudyard Kipling, David Jones, T. S. Eliot and his presence on the radio.
On Nature and the Goddess in Romantic and Post-Romantic Literature
Author: John O?Meara
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1475942931
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
A Trilogy bringing together titles by John OMeara that are also individually available from iUniverse. The Modern Debacle Containing close readings of work by Beckett, Hemingway, and T.S.Eliot; Tennessee Williams, Chekhov, Arthur Miller, and Brecht; Plath, Hughes, and Robert Graves, and W.B. Yeats. beautifully and fluently written and ingenious in its combination of catastrophes --Anthony Gash, Drama Head, The University of East Anglia Myth, Depravity, Impasse An in-depth study of Robert Graves, the modern theory of myth and Ted Hughes, with further reference to Shakespeare and to Keats. I am very sympathetic to the cause of myth and especially in relation to literature --Michael Bell, author of Literature, Modernism and Myth in a letter to John OMeara This Life, This Death An extensive study of Wordsworths great life-crisis, with additional reference to S.T. Coleridge, and to P.B. Shelley. Of this Wordsworth book, one recognizes its truth, its breadth of coverage and awareness, and above all its depth... --Richard Ramsbotham, editor of Vernon Watkins, New Selected Poems, Carcanet Press
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1475942931
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Book Description
A Trilogy bringing together titles by John OMeara that are also individually available from iUniverse. The Modern Debacle Containing close readings of work by Beckett, Hemingway, and T.S.Eliot; Tennessee Williams, Chekhov, Arthur Miller, and Brecht; Plath, Hughes, and Robert Graves, and W.B. Yeats. beautifully and fluently written and ingenious in its combination of catastrophes --Anthony Gash, Drama Head, The University of East Anglia Myth, Depravity, Impasse An in-depth study of Robert Graves, the modern theory of myth and Ted Hughes, with further reference to Shakespeare and to Keats. I am very sympathetic to the cause of myth and especially in relation to literature --Michael Bell, author of Literature, Modernism and Myth in a letter to John OMeara This Life, This Death An extensive study of Wordsworths great life-crisis, with additional reference to S.T. Coleridge, and to P.B. Shelley. Of this Wordsworth book, one recognizes its truth, its breadth of coverage and awareness, and above all its depth... --Richard Ramsbotham, editor of Vernon Watkins, New Selected Poems, Carcanet Press
A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on the Poems of W.B. Yeats
Author: Michael O'Neill
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415234764
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214
Book Description
Table of contents
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415234764
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 214
Book Description
Table of contents
Spies in Arabia
Author: Priya Satia
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019971598X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473
Book Description
At the dawn of the twentieth century, British intelligence agents began to venture in increasing numbers to the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, a region of crucial geopolitical importance spanning present-day Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. They were drawn by the twin objectives of securing the land route to India and finding adventure and spiritualism in a mysterious and ancient land. But these competing desires created a dilemma: how were they to discreetly and patriotically gather facts in a region they were drawn to for its legendary inscrutability and by the promise of fame and escape from Britain? In this groundbreaking book, Priya Satia tracks the intelligence community's tactical grappling with this problem and the myriad cultural, institutional, and political consequences of their methodological choices during and after the Great War. She tells the story of how an imperial state in thrall to the cultural notions of equivocal agents and beset by an equally captivated and increasingly assertive mass democracy invented a wholly new style of "covert empire" centered on the world's first brutal aerial surveillance regime in Iraq. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources--from the fictional to the recently declassified--this book explains how Britons reconciled genuine ethical scruples with the actual violence of their Middle Eastern empire. As it vividly demonstrates how imperialism was made fit for an increasingly democratic and anti-imperial world, what emerges is a new interpretation of the military, cultural, and political legacies of the Great War and of the British Empire in the twentieth century. Unpacking the romantic fascination with "Arabia" as the land of espionage, Spies in Arabia presents a stark tale of poetic ambition, war, terror, and failed redemption--and the prehistory of our present discontents.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019971598X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473
Book Description
At the dawn of the twentieth century, British intelligence agents began to venture in increasing numbers to the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, a region of crucial geopolitical importance spanning present-day Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. They were drawn by the twin objectives of securing the land route to India and finding adventure and spiritualism in a mysterious and ancient land. But these competing desires created a dilemma: how were they to discreetly and patriotically gather facts in a region they were drawn to for its legendary inscrutability and by the promise of fame and escape from Britain? In this groundbreaking book, Priya Satia tracks the intelligence community's tactical grappling with this problem and the myriad cultural, institutional, and political consequences of their methodological choices during and after the Great War. She tells the story of how an imperial state in thrall to the cultural notions of equivocal agents and beset by an equally captivated and increasingly assertive mass democracy invented a wholly new style of "covert empire" centered on the world's first brutal aerial surveillance regime in Iraq. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources--from the fictional to the recently declassified--this book explains how Britons reconciled genuine ethical scruples with the actual violence of their Middle Eastern empire. As it vividly demonstrates how imperialism was made fit for an increasingly democratic and anti-imperial world, what emerges is a new interpretation of the military, cultural, and political legacies of the Great War and of the British Empire in the twentieth century. Unpacking the romantic fascination with "Arabia" as the land of espionage, Spies in Arabia presents a stark tale of poetic ambition, war, terror, and failed redemption--and the prehistory of our present discontents.