The Convent Of Pleasure And Other Plays Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of The Convent Of Pleasure And Other Plays book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays by Margaret Cavendish Duchess of Newcastle Pdf
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673), until recently remembered more as a flamboyant eccentric than as a serious writer, was in fact the most prolific, thought-provoking, and original woman writer of the Restoration. Cavendish is the author of many poems, short stories, biographies, memoirs, letters, philosophical and scientific works (including The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing World, the first work of science fiction by a woman), and nineteen plays. "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays collects four of Cavendish's dramatic works that are among the most revealing of her attitudes toward marriage and her desire for fame. Loves Adventures (1662) centers on a woman succeeding in war and diplomacy by passing as a man. Similarly, the heroine of Bell in Campo (1662) rescues her husband at the head of an army of women in this tale of a marriage of near equals. The Convent of Pleasure (1668) proposes a separatist community of women and has received attention for its suggestion of lesbian sexuality. The Bridals (1662), a more typical restoration comedy satirizing marriage, rounds out the collection. Edited with notes and annotation by Anne Shaver, "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays also contains a timeline, biography and bibliography of the Duchess, an appreciation of Cavendish's life and work, and a bibliography of critical essays. Also included are all of Cavendish's epistles To the Reader as well as Other Preliminary Matter from Playes (1662), and Cavendish's original preface to Plays Never Before Printed (1668). A valuable collection from an extraordinary writer, "The Convent of Pleasure" and Other Plays raises important issues about women and gender.
The Convent of Pleasure: A Comedy by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle Pdf
MAdam, you being young, handsome, rich, and virtuous, I hope you will not cast away those gifts of Nature, Fortune, and Heaven, upon a Person which cannot merit you? L. Happy. Let me tell you, that Riches ought to be bestowed on such as are poor, and want means to maintain themselves; and Youth, on those that are old; Beauty, on those that are ill-favoured; and Virtue, on those that are vicious: So that if I should place my gifts rightly, I must Marry one that's poor, old, ill-favoured, and debauch'd.
The Convent of Pleasure (1868) is a closet drama by Margaret Cavendish. Intended for private performance rather than the stage, The Convent of Pleasure is a comedy that critiques the institution of marriage and explores the possibility of lesbian desire in a patriarchal society. Published under the author's own name--a rare feat for a woman of her time--The Convent of Pleasure is a groundbreaking work of queer utopian literature that continues to inform and inspire artists and critics alike. "Put the case I should Marry the best of Men, if any best there be; yet would a Marry'd life have more crosses and sorrows then pleasure, freedom, or hapiness: nay Marriage to those that are virtuous is a greater restraint then a Monastery." Tired of the ways of men, Lady Happy encourages her friends to join an experimental cloister devoted to feminine autonomy, friendship, and desire. Despite opposition from angry Monsieurs and the skeptical Madam Mediator, the woman forge a tight-knit group and seem prepared to defy the institution of marriage while pursuing romantic relationships with their fellow women. Before long, a mysterious Princess seeks entry to the convent. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.
Margaret Cavendish was one of the most subversive and entertaining writers of the seventeenth century. She invented new genres, challenged gender roles, and critiqued the new science as well as the mores of society. “Paper Bodies” was the wonderful phrase she used to described her manuscripts, which she hoped would continue to make “a great Blazing Light” after her death. There are connections here to Cavendish’s most famous work, The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World (1666), a unique tale of a woman travelling through the north pole to a strange new world. In addition to The Blazing World, this volume includes Cavendish’s brief autobiography, A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding and Life (1667), her play The Convent of Pleasure, and selections from her Sociable Letters, her poetry, and her critical writings. A variety of background documents by other seventeenth-century writers helps to set her work in context for the modern reader.
When Margaret Cavendish published her first collection of dramatic work in 1662, she was keenly aware that none of her comedies or tragedies was unlikely to be acted, at least in her lifetime--but that did not deter her. "To those that do delight in scenes and wit / I dedicate my book," she writes at the beginning of the volume entitled, simply, "Plays." As for the hard reality that her plays were not to be produced? She has an answer for that as well: "For all the time my plays a-making were, / My brain the stage, my thoughts were acting there." "The Female Academy," the last play in her 1662 collection, opens with a fait accompli-a group of "old matrons" has established an educational institution devoted exclusively to the education of young women, "a house wherein a company of young ladies are instructed . . . to speak wittily and rationally, . . . to behave themselves handsomely, and to live virtuously." In this play, Cavendish presents the Female Academy as an institution created by women, inhabited solely by women, and operated for the benefit of women. The play also allows us to see the reactions of men, excluded from the Female Academy. Instead of ignoring the school, or wishing its young pupils well in their educational pursuits, men can't stay away-they hang around and spy on what's going on through "a large open grate" that allows them to hear the lectures being given inside. The play alternates scenes between the young women inside the Female Academy and the increasingly frustrated men in the outside world. This new edition, designed for classroom use, provides an ample introduction to Cavendish and her work, a carefully modernized text, with helpful glosses and notes, and a useful bibliography with references for further reading.
"Which one of you bitches is my mother?" Four elegant, successful, and sophisticated women in their forties are called to New York's Pierre Hotel to meet Lili -- a beautiful, young, and notoriously temperamental Hollywood movie star. None of the women knows exactly why she is there; each has a reason to hate Lili and each of them is astonished to see the others. They are old friends who share a guilty secret and who have for years been doing their best to keep that secret quiet. Their lives are changed forever, however, when Lili suddenly confronts them. When the women refuse to answer her, Lili proceeds to travel around the world through the playgrounds of the rich and famous, seeking to answer the question that has obsessed and almost destroyed her. From Paris to London, from the boardroom to the bedroom, Lace takes the reader into the rarified world of five unforgettable women who are as beautiful, as complex and as strong as...lace.
Three Seventeenth-Century Plays on Women and Performance by Hero Chalmers,Julie Sanders,Sophie Tomlinson Pdf
This is a ground-breaking edition of three seventeenth-century plays that all engage in diverse and exciting ways with questions of gender and performance. The collection, edited by three pioneering scholars of elite female culture and early modern drama, makes the texts of three much-discussed plays - John Fletcher's The Wild-Goose Chase, James Shirley's The Bird in a Cage and Margaret Cavendish's The Convent of Pleasure - available together in a full scholarly edition for the first time.The Wild Goose Chase (1621) and The Bird in a Cage (1633) were both performed in the commercial London theatres in the Jacobean and Caroline periods respectively. The Convent of Pleasure (1668) is a so-called 'closet' drama, designed primarily for reading but drawing on a tradition of aristocratic theatricals. In a wide-ranging co-authored introduction to the volume, the editors explore the concerns of these playtexts in relation to contemporary debates surrounding popular festivity and anti-theatricalism, as well as the agency of elite female culture in the Stuart period and the emergence of the professional female actor in the Restoration.The volume will be an invaluable teaching and research tool for students and scholars of early modern drama, women's writing and performance studies more generally, as well as providing a rich sourcebook for the reader interested in seventeenth-century theatrical culture.
The Blazing World Illustrated by Margaret Cavendish Pdf
The Blazing World, is a 1666 work of prose fiction by the English writer Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. Feminist critic Dale Spender calls it a forerunner of science fiction. It can also be read as a utopian work
Cavendish and Shakespeare by Katherine Romack,James Fitzmaurice Pdf
Cavendish and Shakespeare, Interconnections explores the relationship between the plays of Shakespeare and the writings of Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673). The essays contained in this volume fit together as studies of various sorts of influence, both literary and historical, setting Cavendish's appropriation of Shakespearean characters and plot structures within the context of the English Civil Wars and the Fronde.The essays trace Shakespeare's influence on Cavendish and explore the political implications of Cavendish's contribution to Shakespeare's reputation.
Chapter One Where I Want to Be I was twenty-nine years old when the Arno flooded its banks on Friday 4 November 1966. According to the Sunday New York Times the damage wasn't extensive, but by Monday it was clear that Florence was a disaster. Twenty feet of water in the cloisters of Santa Croce, the Cimabue crucifix ruined beyond hope of restoration, panels ripped from the Baptistry doors, the basement of the Biblioteca Nazionale completely underwater, hundreds of thousands of volumes waterlogged, the Archivio di Stato in total disarray. On Tuesday I decided to go to Italy, to offer my services as a humble book conservator, to help in any way I could, to save whatever could be saved, including myself. The decision wasn't a popular one at home. Papa was having money troubles of his own and didn't want to pay for a ticket. And my boss at the Newberry Library didn't understand either. He already had his ticket, paid for by the library, and needed me to mind the store. There wasn't any point in both of us going, was there? "The why don't I go and you can mind the store?" "Because, because, because . . ." "Yes?" Because it just didn't make sense. He couldn't see his way clear to granting me a leave of absence, not even a leave of absence without pay. He even suggested that the library might have to replace me, in which case . . . But I decided to go anyway. I had enough money in my savings account for a ticket on Icelandic, and I figured I could live on the cheap once I got there. Besides, I wanted to break the mold in which my life was hardening, and I thought this might be a way to do it. Going to Florence was better than waiting around with nothing coming up. My English teacher at Kenwood High used to say that we're like onions: you can peel off one layer after another and never get to a center, an inner core. You just run out of layers. But I think I'm like a peach or an apricot or a nectarine. There's a pit at the center. I can crack my teeth on it, or I can suck on it like a piece of candy; but it won't crumble, and it won't dissolve. The pit is an image of myself when I was nineteen. I'm in Sardegna, and I'm standing high up on a large rock–a cliff, actually–and I don't have any clothes on, and everyone is looking at me, telling me to come down, not to jump, it's too high. It's my second time in Italy. I spent a year here with Mama when I was fifteen, and then I came back by myself, after finishing high school at home, to do the last year of the liceo with my former classmates. Now we're celebrating the end of our examinations–Silvia (who spent a year with us in Chicago), Claudia, Rossella, Giulio, Fabio, Alessandro. Names like flowers, or bells. And me, Margot Harrington. More friends are coming later. Silvia's parents (my host family) have a summer house just outside Terranova, but we're camping on the beach, five kilometers down the coast. The coast is safe, they say, though there are bandits in the centro. Wow! It's my birthday–August first–and we've had a supper of bluefish and squid that we caught with a net. The squid taste like rubber bands, the heavy kind that I used to chew on in grade school and that boys sometimes used to snap our bottoms with in junior high. Life is sharp and snappy, too, full of promise, like the sting of those rubber bands: I've passed my examinations with distinction; I'm going to Harvard in the fall (well, to Radcliffe); I've got an Italian boyfriend named Fabio Fabbriani; and I've just been skinny-dipping in the stinging cold salt sea. The others have put their clothes on now–I can see them below me, sitting around the remains of the fire in shorts and halter tops and shirts with the sleeves rolled up two turns, talking, glancing up nervously–but I want to savor the taste/thrill of my own nakedness a little longer, unembarrassed in the dwindling light. It's the scariest thing I've ever done, except coming to Italy in the first place. Fabio sits with his back toward me while he smokes a cigarette, pretending to be angry because I won't come down, but when I close my eyes and will him to turn, he puts his cigarette out in the sand and turns. Just at that moment I jump, sucking in my breath for a scream but then holding it, in case I need it latter, which I do. I hit the Tyrrhenian Sea feet first, generating little waves that will, in theory, soon be lapping the beaches along the entire western coast of Italy–Sicily and North Africa, too. The Tyrrhenian Sea responds by closing over me and it's pitch, not like the pool in Chicago where I learned to swim, but deep and dark and dangerous and deadly. The air in my lungs–the scream and I saved for just such an occasion–carries me up to the surface, and I strike out for the cove, meeting Fabio before I'm halfway there, wondering if like me he's naked under the water and not knowing for sure till we're walking waist deep and he takes me by the shoulders and kisses me and I can feel something bobbing against my legs like a floating cork. We haven't made love yet, but it's won't be long now. O dio mio. The waiting is so lovely. He squeezes my buns and I squeeze his, surprised, and then we splash in to the beach and put on our clothes. What I didn't know at the time was that my mother had become seriously ill. Instead of spending the rest of the summer in Sardegna, I had to go back to Chicago, and then, after that, nothing happened. I mean none of the things I'd expected to happen happened. Instead of making love with Fabio Fabbriani on the verge of the Tyrrhenian Sea, I got laid on a vinyl sofa in the back room of the SNCC headquarters on Forty-seventh Street. Instead of going to Harvard, I went to Edgar Lee Masters College, where Mama had taught art history for twenty years. Instead of going to graduate school I spent two years at the Institute for Paper Technology on Green Bay Avenue; instead of becoming a research chemist I apprenticed myself to a book conservator in Hyde Park and then took a position in the conservation department of the Newberry Library. Instead of getting married and having a daughter of my own, I lived at home and looked after Mama, who was dying of lung cancer. A year went by, two years, three years, four. Mama died; Papa lost most of his money. My sister Meg got married and moved away; my sister Molly went to California with her boyfriend and then to Ann Arbor. The sixties were churning around me, and I couldn't seem to get a footing. I tried to plunge in, to get wet, to catch hold, to find a place in one of the boats tossing and turning on the white-water rapids: the sit-ins, the rock concerts, the freedom rides, SNCC, CORE, SDS, the Civil Rights Act, the Great Society. I spent a lot of time holding hands and singing "We shall overcome," I spent a lot of time buying coffee and doughnuts and rolling joints, and I spent some time on my back, too–the only position for a woman in the Movement. I'd had no sleep on the plane; my eyes were blurry so it was hard to read; and besides, the story I was reading was as depressing as the view from the window of the train–flat, gray, poor, dreary, actively ugly rather than passively uninteresting. And I kept thinking about Papa and his money troubles and his lawsuits, and about the embroidered seventeenth-century prayer books on my work table at the Newberry that needed to be disbound, washed, mended, and resewn before Christmas for an exhibit sponsored by the Caxton Club. So I was under a certain amount of pressure. I was looking for a sign, the way some religious people look for signs, something to let them know they're on the right track. Or on the wrong track, in which case they can turn back. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I was trying to pay attention, to notice everything–the faces of the two American women sitting opposite me in the compartment, scribbling furiously in their notebooks; the Neapolitan accent of the Italian conductor; the depressing French farmhouses, gray boxes of stucco or cinder block, I couldn't make out which. That's what I was doing–paying attention–when the train pulled into the station at Metz and I saw the Saint-Cyr cadet on the platform, bright as the Archangel Gabriel bringing the good news to the Virgin Mary. I'd better explain. Papa did all the cooking in our family. He started when Mama went to Italy one summer when I was nine–it was right after the war–to look at the pictures, to see for herself what she'd only seen in the Harvard University Prints series and on old three-by-four-inch tinted slides that she used to project on the dining room wall; and when she came back he kept on doing it. My sisters and I did the dishes and Papa took care of everything else, day in and day out, and whether it was Italian or French or Chinese or Malaysian, it was always wonderful, it was always special. Penne alla puttanesca, an arista tied with sprigs of rosemary, paper-thin strips of beef marinated in hoisin sauce and Szechwan peppercorns, whole fresh salmon poached in white wine and finished with a mustard sauce, chicken thighs simmered in soy sauce and lime juice, curries so fiery that at their first bite unwary guests would clutch their throats and cry out for water, which didn't help a bit. Those were our favorites, the standards against which we measured other dishes; but our very favorite treat of all was the dessert Papa made on our birthdays, instead of cake, which was supposed to look like the hats worn by cadets at Saint-Cyr, the French military academy. We'd never been to Saint-Cyr, of course, but we would have recognized a cadet anywhere in the world, if he'd been wearing his hat. That's why I was so startled when I looked out the window of the Luxembourg-Venise Express and saw my cadet standing there on the platform–the young man Papa had teased me about, the Prince Charming who had never materialized. He was holding a suitcase in one hand and shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other, as if he had to go to the bathroom, and his parents were talking at him so intensely that I thought for a minute he was going to miss the train. And his hat! I couldn't believe it was a real hat and not a frozen mousse of chocolate and egg whites and whipped cream with squiggly Italian meringues running up and down the sides for braids. That hat stirred something inside me, made me feel I was doing the right thing and that I ought to keep going, that things would work out. Just to make sure I closed my eyes and willed him into the compartment, just as I had once willed Fabio Fabbriani to turn and watch me plunge feet first into the sea. As I was willing him into the compartment I was willing the American women out of it–not making my cadet's appearance contingent on their departure, however, because I was pretty sure they weren't going to budge. I kept my face down in my book and waited, eyes closed lightly, listening to the noises in the corridor. I was, I suppose, still operating, at least subconsciously, on a fairy-tale model of reality: I was Sleeping Beauty, or Snow White, waiting for some prince whose romantic kisses would awaken my full feelings, liberate my story senses, emancipate my drowsy and constrained imagination, take me back to that last Italian summer. The train was already in motion when the door of the compartment finally opened. I kept my eyes closed another two seconds and then looked up at–not my Prince Charming but the Neapolitan conductor, an old man so frail I'd had to help him hoist the American women's mammoth suitcases onto the overhead luggage rack. These suitcases were to luggage what Burberrys are to rainwear–lots of extra pockets and straps and mysterious zippers concealed under flaps. I asked him about the Saint-Cyr cadet. "The next compartment," he said. "Not your type. Too young. You need an older man like me." "You're already married." He shrugged, putting his whole body into it, arms, hands, shoulders, head cocked, stomach pulled in. "Better tell your friends"–we were speaking in Italian–"that the dining car will be taken off the train before we cross the border. You need to reserve a seat early." I nodded. "Unless," he went on, "they have those valises stuffed with American food. Porcamattina." He glanced upward at the suitcases, tapped his cheekbone with an index finger and was gone. I felt for these American women some of the mixed feelings that the traveler feels for the tourist. On the one hand you want to help, to show off your knowledge; on the other you don't want to get involved. I didn't want to get involved. They weren't my type. These were saltwater women–sailors, golfers, tennis players, clubwomen with suntans in November, large limbed, confident, conspicuous, firm, trim, sleek as walruses in their worsted wool suits. They reminded me of the Gold Coast women who used to show up around the edges of CORE demonstrations, with their checkbooks open, telling us how much they admired what we were doing, and how they wished they could help more. All fucked up ideologically, according to our leaders at SNCC: "They think their shit don't stink." As far as they knew, I was a scruffy little Italian–I hadn't spoken a word of English in their presence, and I was reading an Italian novel–and it was too late to undeceive them. I had heard too much. I knew, for example, that they'd met the previous summer at some kind of writing workshop at Johns Hopkins University and that they'd both jumped into the sack with their instructor, a novelist named Philip. I knew that Philip was bald but well hung ("like a shillelagh"). I knew that neither of them had done it dog fashion BP ("before Philip") and that they were traveling second class because Philip had told them they'd get more material that way for the stories they were going to write now that they were divorced. Part of their agenda, I gathered, was to notice things, to pay attention. Maybe they were looking for signs, too, maybe not; in either case they seemed to be trying to impress the details of European railroad travel onto the pages of their marbled composition books by sheer physical force. Nothing escaped their notice, not even the signs, in French, German and Italian, warning passengers not to throw things out the window and not to pull the cord on the signal d'alarme. All the details went into their notebooks–the fine of not less than 5,000 FF, the prison term of not less than one year. And when one noticed something, the other did, too: the instructions on the window latch, the way the armrests worked, the captions on the faded views of Chartres Cathedral that hung on the walls of the compartment above the backs of the seats. (I was tempted to look at them myself, but I didn't want to give myself away or interrupt their game.) I kept my nose in my book–Natalia Ginzburg's Lessico famigliare. It was a strenuous hour, and I was glad when, simultaneously, panting like dogs after a good run, they closed their notebooks and resumed their conversation.
Author : Craig A. Monson Publisher : University of Chicago Press Page : 258 pages File Size : 48,8 Mb Release : 2010-11-15 Category : History ISBN : 9780226534626
Witchcraft. Arson. Going AWOL. Some nuns in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy strayed far from the paradigms of monastic life. Cloistered in convents, subjected to stifling hierarchy, repressed, and occasionally persecuted by their male superiors, these women circumvented authority in sometimes extraordinary ways. But tales of their transgressions have long been buried in the Vatican Secret Archive. That is, until now. In Nuns Behaving Badly, Craig A. Monson resurrects forgotten tales and restores to life the long-silent voices of these cloistered heroines. Here we meet nuns who dared speak out about physical assault and sexual impropriety (some real, some imagined). Others were only guilty of misjudgment or defacing valuable artwork that offended their sensibilities. But what unites the women and their stories is the challenges they faced: these were women trying to find their way within the Catholicism of their day and through the strict limits it imposed on them. Monson introduces us to women who were occasionally desperate to flee cloistered life, as when an entire community conspired to torch their convent and be set free. But more often, he shows us nuns just trying to live their lives. When they were crossed—by powerful priests who claimed to know what was best for them—bad behavior could escalate from mere troublemaking to open confrontation. In resurrecting these long-forgotten tales and trials, Monson also draws attention to the predicament of modern religious women, whose “misbehavior”—seeking ordination as priests or refusing to give up their endowments to pay for priestly wrongdoing in their own archdioceses—continues even today. The nuns of early modern Italy, Monson shows, set the standard for religious transgression in their own age—and beyond.
The Blazing World and Other Writings by Margaret Cavendish Pdf
Flamboyant, theatrical and ambitious, Margaret Cavendish was one of the seventeenth century's most striking figures: a woman who ventured into the male spheres of politics, science, philosophy and literature. The Blazing World is a highly original work: part Utopian fiction, part feminist text, it tells of a lady shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination. This volume also includes The Contract, a romance in which love and law work harmoniously together, and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity, which explores the power and freedom a woman can achieve in the disguise of a man.
Goliarda Sapienza's The Art of Joy was written over a nine year span, from 1967 to 1976. At the time of her death in 1996, Sapienza had published nothing in a decade, having been unable to find a publisher for what was to become her most celebrated work, due to its perceived immorality. One publisher's rejection letter exclaimed: 'It's a pile of iniquity.' The manuscript lay for decades in a chest finally being proclaimed a "forgotten masterpiece" when it was eventually published in 2005. This epic Sicilian novel, which begins in the year 1900 and follows its main character, Modesta, through nearly the entire span of the 20th century, is at once a coming-of-age novel, a tale of sexual adventure and discovery, a fictional autobiography, and a sketch of Italy's moral, political and social past. Born in a small Sicilian village and orphaned at age nine, Modesta spends her childhood in a convent raised by nuns.Through sheer cunning, she manages to escape, and eventually becomes a princess. Sensual, proud, and determined, Modesta wants to discover the infinite richness of life and sets about destroying all social barriers that impede her quest for the fulfilment of her desires. She seduces both men and women, and even murder becomes acceptable as a means of removing an obstacle to happiness and self-discovery. Goliarda Sapienza (1924-1996) was born in Catania, Sicily in 1924, in an anarchist socialist family. At sixteen, she entered the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Rome and worked under the direction of Luchino Visconti, Alessandro Blasetti and Francesco Maselli. She is the author of several novels published during her lifetime: Lettera Aperta (1967), Il Filo Di Mezzogiorno (1969), L'Università di Reibbia (1983), Le Certezze Del Dubbio (1987). L'Arte Della Gioia is considered her masterpiece.
Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write: An Autobiography in Essays by Claire Messud Pdf
A glimpse into a beloved novelist’s inner world, shaped by family, art, and literature. In her fiction, Claire Messud "has specialized in creating unusual female characters with ferocious, imaginative inner lives" (Ruth Franklin, New York Times Magazine). Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write opens a window on Messud’s own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm, complicated family; and, throughout it all, her devotion to art and literature. In twenty-six intimate, brilliant, and funny essays, Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk, and Valeria Luiselli; examines three facets of Albert Camus and The Stranger; and tours her favorite paintings at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. In the luminous title essay, she explores her drive to write, born of the magic of sharing language and the transformative powers of “a single successful sentence.” Together, these essays show the inner workings of a dazzling literary mind. Crafting a vivid portrait of a life in celebration of the power of literature, Messud proves once again "an absolute master storyteller" (Rebecca Carroll, Los Angeles Times).
Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis by Lia Litosseliti,Jane Sunderland Pdf
Gender and discourse interface in many more epistemological sites than can be represented in one collection. Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis therefore focuses on a principled diversity of key sites within four broad areas: the media, sexuality, education and parenthood. The different chapters together illustrate how taking a discourse perspective facilitates understanding of the complex and subtle ways in which gender is represented, constructed and contested through language. The book engages critically with long-running and on-going debates, but also reflects and develops current understandings of gender, identity and discourse, particularly the shift from 'gender differences' to the discoursal shaping of gender. Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis thus offers not only insights and methodologies of new empirical studies but also careful theorisations, in particular of discourse, text, identity and gender. The collection is a valuable resource for researchers, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates working in the area of gender and discourse.