Creativity and the Poetic Mind mingles the voices of well-known writers such as Nikki Giovanni, Donald Hall, John Koethe, Marge Piercy, and Robert Pinsky with newer voices, and includes engaging excerpts from interviews with thirty-eight American poets. Within a sustained argument about creative states of mind, this book innovatively presents and explores the technique of «going to the place» as more reliable in writing poetry than waiting for «inspiration». It explains why poets frequently believe that talking about their own poetry may damage their creativity and why, for centuries, inspiration has seemed to come from somewhere beyond the poet. In addition, it discusses the practicality of poets' thinking that «being creative» and «writing poetry» are two separate skills: inspiration is unreliable, but experienced poets create daily.

The history of the most hotly debated areas of literary theory, including structuralism and deconstruction.

Futurism Studies in its canonical form has followed in the steps of Marinetti's concept of Futurisme mondial, according to which Futurism had its centre in Italy and a large number of satellites around Europe and the rest of the globe. Consequently, authors of textbook histories of Futurism focus their attention on Italy, add a chapter or two on Russia and dedicate next to no attention to developments in other parts of the world. Futurism Studies tends to sees in Marinetti's movement the font and mother of all subsequent avant-gardes and deprecates the non-European variants as mere 'derivatives'. Vol. 7 of the International Yearbook of Futurism Studies will focus on one of these regions outside Europe and demonstrate that the heuristic model of centre – periphery is faulty and misleading, as it ignores the originality and inventiveness of art and literature in Latin America. Futurist tendencies in both Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries may have been, in part, 'influenced' by Italian Futurism, but they certainly did no 'derive' from it. The shift towards modernity took place in Latin America more or less in parallel to the economic progress made in the underdeveloped countries of Europe. Italy and Russia have often been described as having originated Futurism because of their backwardness compared to the industrial powerhouses England, Germany and France. According to this narrative, Spain and Portugal occupied a position of semi-periphery. They had channelled dominant cultural discourses from the centre nations into the colonies. However, with the rise of modernity and the emergence of independence movements, cultural discourses in the colonies undertook a major shift. The revolt of the European avant-garde against academic art found much sympathy amongst Latin American artists, as they were engaged in a similar battle against the canonical discourses of colonial rule. One can therefore detect many parallels between the European and Latin American avant-garde movements. This includes the varieties of Futurism, to which Yearbook 2017 will be dedicated. In Europe, the avant-garde had a complex relationship to tradition, especially its 'primitivist' varieties. In Latin America, the avant-garde also sought to uncover and incorporate alternative, i.e. indigenous traditions. The result was a hybrid form of art and literature that showed many parallels to the European avant-garde, but also had other sources of inspiration. Given the large variety of indigenous cultures on the American continent, it was only natural that many heterogeneous mixtures of Futurism emerged there. Yearbook 2017 explores this plurality of Futurisms and the cultural traditions that influenced them. Contributions focus on the intertextual character of Latin American Futurisms, interpret works of literature and fine arts within their local setting, consider modes of production and consumption within each culture as well as the forms of interaction with other Latin American and European centres. 14 essays locate Futurism within the complex network of cultural exchange, unravel the Futurist contribution to the complex interrelations between local and the global cultures in Latin America and reveal the dynamic dialogue as well as the multiple forms of cross-fertilization that existed amongst them.

Brief therapy is a postmodern treatment mode that treats problems as social constructions, encouraging those seeking treatment to replace personal troubles (negative stories) with new problem-solving skills (positive stories). The significant differences discussed in this book do not involve sociologists and brief therapists. The differences are between brief therapists, on the one hand, and practitioners of psychotherapy and family therapy on the other. One indicator of these is brief therapists' describing the people who seek their services as clients. The terminology may be contrasted with the language of patients used by many other therapists. At the very least, this difference suggests how brief therapy departs from therapy approaches that are based on the medical model. Becoming Miracle Workers takes the reader inside "Northland Clinic," one of the most innovative and important centers of brief therapy in the world. Based on twelve years of research, Miller's book discusses how brief therapy has evolved into its present, postmodern form. He describes the details of brief therapist-client interactions, and the behind-the-scenes discussions among brief therapists about their clients' problems. This readable account of the workings of brief therapy invites readers to sit in on brief therapy sessions, provides them with new understandings of personal troubles as social constructions, and shows how brief therapists help their clients develop new, untroubled, life stories.

Do words--their sounds and shapes, their lengths and patterns--imitate the world? Mimology says they do. First argued in Plato's Cratylus more than two thousand years ago, mimology has left an important mark in virtually every major art and artistic theory thereafter. Mimology is the basis of language sciences and incites occasional hilarity. Genette treats matters as basic and staid as the alphabet and as reverberating as the letter R in ur-linguistics. Mimologics bridges mainstream literary history and Genette's expertise in critical method by undertaking an intensive study of the most vexed of literary problems: language as a representation of reality. --From publisher's description.

Historically, Kashmir was one of the most dynamic and influential centers of Sanskrit learning and literary production in South Asia. In Poetry as Prayer in the Sanskrit Hymns of Kashmir, Hamsa Stainton investigates the close connection between poetry and prayer in South Asia by studying the history of Sanskrit hymns of praise (stotras) in Kashmir. The book provides a broad introduction to the history and general features of the stotra genre, and it charts the course of these literary hymns in Kashmir from the eighth century to the present. In particular, it offers the first major study in any European language of the Stutikusum=añjali, an important work of religious literature dedicated to the god 'Siva and one of the only extant witnesses to the trajectory of Sanskrit literary culture in fourteenth-century Kashmir. The book also contributes to the study of 'Saivism by examining the ways in which 'Saiva poets have integrated the traditions of Sanskrit literature and poetics, theology (especially non-dualism), and 'Saiva worship and devotion. It substantiates the diverse configurations of 'Saiva bhakti expressed and explored in these literary hymns and the challenges they present for standard interpretations of Hindu bhakti. More broadly, this study of stotras from Kashmir offers new perspectives on the history and vitality of prayer in South Asia and its complex relationships to poetry and poetics.

No detailed description available for "A certain order".

For decades, scholars have been making the connection between the design of the superhero story and the mythology of the ancient folktale. Moving beyond simple comparisons and common explanations, this volume details how the workings of the superhero comics industry and the conventions of the medium have developed a culture like that of traditional epic storytelling. It chronicles the continuation of the oral/traditional culture of the early 20th century superhero industry in the endless variations on Superman and shows how Frederic Wertham's anti-comic crusade in the mid-1950s helped make comics the most countercultural new medium of the 20th century. By revealing how contemporary superhero comics, like Geoff Johns' Green Lantern and Warren Ellis's The Authority, connect traditional aesthetics and postmodern theories, this work explains why the superhero comic book flourishes in the "new traditional" shape of our acutely self-conscious digital age.

Perhaps no one would be more shocked at the steady rise of his literary reputation—on a truly global scale—Than Edgar Allan Poe himself. Poe's literary reputation has climbed steadily since his death in 1849. In Poe Abroad, Lois Vines has brought together a collection of essays that document the American writer's influence on the diverse literatures—and writers—of the world. Over twenty scholars demonstrate how and why Poe has significantly influenced many of the major literary figures of the last 150 years. Part One includes studies of Poe's popularity among general readers, his influence on literary movements, and his reputation as a poet, fiction writer, and literary critic. Part Two presents analyses of the role Poe played in the literary development of specific writers representing many different cultures. Poe Abroad commemorates the 150th anniversary of Poe's death and celebrates his worldwide impact, beginning with the first literal translation of Poe into a foreign language, “The Gold-Bug”into French in 1845. Charles Baudelaire translated another Poe tale in 1848 and four years later wrote an essay that would make Poe a well-known author in Europe even before he achieved recognition in America. Poe died knowing only that some of his stories had been translated into French. He probably never would have imagined that his work would be admired and imitated as far away as Japan, China, and India or would have a lasting influence on writers such as Baudelaire, August Strindberg, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, and Tanizaki Junichiro. As we approach the sesquicentennial of his death, Poe Abroad brings together a timely one-volume assessment of Poe's influence throughout the world.

Focusing on pragmatics, this work examines verbal ambiguity and verbal generality whilst providing a detailed theory of conversational implicature using the work of Paul Grice as a starting point.