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This new collection of J. Hillis Miller’s essays centres on the question “why and to what end should we read, teach, and spend our time with literary and/or cultural studies?” At a time when electronic media seem to dominate the market completely, and jobs follow the money flows into electronic and technical fields, literary and cultural studies might appear as a decorative addenda but not really necessary for the process of growth and development, neither in business nor in the area of personal development. This question is not really new, it has many facets, requires differentiated answers which depend and mirror the political and cultural climate of a society.

cultural studies --- literary studies

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The fifteen essays collected in Hard Reading argue that science fiction has its own internal rhetoric, relying on devices such as neologism, dialogism, semantic shifts, the use of unreliable narrators. It is a “high-information” genre which does not follow the Flaubertian ideal of le mot juste, “the right word”, preferring le mot imprévisible, “the unpredictable word”. Science fiction derives much of its energy from engagement with vital intellectual issues in the “soft sciences”, especially history, anthropology, the study of different cultures, with a strong bearing on politics. Both the rhetoric and the issues deserve to be taken much more seriously than they have been in academia, and in the wider world.Hard Reading is also a memoir of what it was like to be a committed fan, from teenage years, and also an academic struggling to find a place, at a time when a declared interest in science fiction and fantasy was the kiss of death for a career in the humanities.

Literature --- literary studies --- science fiction

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This book fills a gap in the market as it ranges over the whole of Belleau’s work, rather than concentrating solely on La Bergerie or Les Amours et nouveaux eschanges des pierres precieuses. It starts by asking why a group of doctors produced a French edition of Belleau in 1945. It moves on to consider sickness and healing in Belleau’s work, studying the comedy, La Reconnue, and the macaronic poem, the Dictamen metrificum, alongside the better-known texts. Throughout, it emphasizes the importance of the political and religious background of the time. A miraculous stick that Belleau describes in La Bergerie is seen in the first chapter of L’Art de guérir as a symbol of therapeutic powers. The second chapter considers love and the poet’s debt to other writers, such as Sappho or Ficino (Belleau was erudite and eclectic). Les Amours de David et de Bersabee is the focal point of Chapter 3; once again one sees the corrosive powers of love, and the ability of poetry and music to transform suffering into beauty. Mention is made of the various academies, which were important in Belleau’s development. Chapter 4 traces the motif of illness in La Reconnue and links it to religious turmoil. This connection is even clearer in the Dictamen metrificum de bello huguenotico, a strange, savagely humorous text (Chapter 5). Chapter 6 concerns Belleau’s poems on precious stones, surely the pinnacle of his achievement. In those, therapy is an explicitly articulated motif, while religious faith is crucial. The conclusion suggests parallels with writers such as Saint Augustine, Rabelais, Du Bellay and Montaigne.

Literary Studies, Literature and Language, Romance Studies

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This study reveals that in medieval Dutch vernacular texts (from the Brabantine authors Jan van Boendale, Lodewijk van Velthem, and Jan van Leeuwen, and in the anonymous Boek van Sidrac) the treatment of individual and universal eschatological topics and themes, such as death, heaven, hell, purgatory, the Antichrist, eschatological people, and Judgement Day is dedicated to moral and ethical guidance to prepare oneself during lifetime for the afterlife. Central to all texts is the fate of the souls in the afterlife and guidelines to assure redemption on Judgment Day. This includes the ability to recognize the signs of the End properly. The vernacular eschatological discourse is considered as an inherent part of the intellectual emancipation of the laity in the later Middle Ages. This book is of interest not only to Dutch and German philologists, but also to historians and anyone interested in the history of religion, especially of eschatology and apocalypticism. This study was awarded with the 2013 Mgr. C. de Clercqprijs of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten (Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts) for an outstanding work in the field 'History of Religions of Flanders'.

history of religion --- literature --- literary studies

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This study examines the intersection of private and public spheres through the representation of memory in contemporary poetry by Irish women. Collins explores how memory shapes creativity in the work of well-known poets such as Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Medbh McGuckian as well as in that of an exciting group of younger poets. This book analyses, for the first time, the complex responses to the past recorded by contemporary women poets in Ireland and the implications these have for the concept of a national tradition.

Literature --- literary studies --- poetry --- women --- ireland