The idea of political unity – or belonging – contains its own opposite, because a political community can never guarantee the equal status of all its members. The price of belonging is an entrenched social stratification and hierarchy within the political unit itself. Lived Fictions explores how the notion of political unity generates a collective commitment to imagining the structure of Canadian society. These political imaginaries – the citizen-state, the market economy, and so forth – are lived fictions. They orient our national identity and shape our understanding of political legitimacy, responsibility, and action. John Grant persuasively details why the project of political unity fails: it distorts our lived experiences and allows inequality and domination to take root. Canada promises unity through democratic politics, reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, a welfare state that protects the vulnerable, and a multicultural approach to cultural relations. This book documents the historical failure of these promises and elaborates the kinds of radical institutional and intellectual changes needed to overcome our lived fictions.

The Fictions that Shape Men’s Lives is structured around a number of key ‘fictions’ of masculinity, such as beliefs in biological determinism, the inevitability of men’s violence and the opposition of the sexes, and proceeds to expose them to be wholly or partially unfounded. Examining the social pressure to behave and experience the self in ways that culture prescribes for the bodies we are perceived as having, this book provides an awareness of widely-held but distorted assumptions of gender. It also seeks to put men into the position to resist masculine social pressures when conforming to it conflicts with important life goals or values and/or causes harm. Making use of an informal, storytelling style provides an accessibility to those interested in breaking down their preconceptions of gender and masculinity, as well making links to key theories and concepts. This is a lively and engaging book for undergraduates studying introduction to Gender, Sexuality and Masculinity courses.

Analysing a wide range of extracts from key works of British fiction from the 18th to the 21st Century, William Hutchings lucidly demonstrates how close reading can enhance appreciation of detail and illuminate whole novels.

This Combo Collection (Set of 4 Books) includes All-time Bestseller Books. This anthology contains : The Way We Live Now The Magician Waverley; Or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since Anthem

Asks important questions about the very nature of stories and examines why we read stories rather than just learning the endings.

We are the author of our own lives. We create, re-create, and co-create our stories over the lifetime we have been given in order to make something of ourselves in the process. Blending new findings from brain science and psychology with spiritual and theological insights, Sandra Levy-Achtemeier has written a readable work translating complex scientific and spiritual categories into practical terms that can inform our everyday selves. From our evolutionary roots that equip us to sing meaning into our living, to the cultural menus we now draw from to script new meaning into our days, she has given us an incredible wealth of wisdom to inform the rest of our life journeys. Underneath it all, Levy-Achtemeier makes the case that God's Spirit and call are at the center of our story--from our brain synapses to the historical circumstances that impinge on our lives.

In the past few years, discussion of fiction in all sorts of media has intensified. The prominence of literary critics has increased, the awarding of lucrative book prizes has become more publicized, and reports of the formation of reading groups have proliferated. Seventeenth-Century Fiction: Text & Transmission responds to the present interest in the novel by offering a fresh approach to the history of early modern fiction that shifts away from the outmoded 'rise-of-the-novel' perspective and reaches beyond the boundaries of a single national literature. Starting from the literary text and looking outwards, this volume focuses on the changes in prose forms and their usage at a critical point in the evolution of modern fiction, and comes to grips with the instabilities of the novel and novella during this period. It explores the nature of seventeenth-century fiction and examines how authors fused fictional and non-fictional materials to create new, hybrid genres. Furthermore, it takes into consideration the cultural interchange between different geographical regions and languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Neo-Latin), and uncovers the deeper roots of seventeenth-century literary innovation, by casting light on the Continental influences on the formation of the English novel and on the role played by women's writings at the time. This landmark volume not only contributes to a more comprehensive history of the novel but promotes an authentic appreciation of early modern fiction.

This study is concerned with how readers are positioned to interpret the past in historical fiction for children and young adults. Looking at literature published within the last thirty to forty years, Wilson identifies and explores a prevalent trend for re-visioning and rewriting the past according to modern social and political ideological assumptions. Fiction within this genre, while concerned with the past at the level of content, is additionally concerned with present views of that historical past because of the future to which it is moving. Specific areas of discussion include the identification of a new sub-genre: Living history fiction, stories of Joan of Arc, historical fiction featuring agentic females, the very popular Scholastic Press historical journal series, fictions of war, and historical fiction featuring multicultural discourses. Wilson observes specific traits in historical fiction written for children — most notably how the notion of positive progress into the future is nuanced differently in this literature in which the concept of progress from the past is inextricably linked to the protagonist’s potential for agency and the realization of subjectivity. The genre consistently manifests a concern with identity construction that in turn informs and influences how a metanarrative of positive progress is played out. This book engages in a discussion of the functionality of the past within the genre and offers an interpretative frame for the sifting out of the present from the past in historical fiction for young readers.

Uses linguistic and semiotic analytical techniques to interrogate the use of language in the construction of political discourses. An impressively broad range of methodologies is used, each to explore a substantive political issue.