470 results for "Literature"

Gaiety transfigured: gay self-representation in American literature

Bergman, David
Bergman analyzes the writings of such famous American writers as Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, F. O. Matthiessen, and Larry Kramer. He considers the entire range of literature, including poetry and drama, and gives attention to African or Native American themes in the work of Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, Francis Grierson, David Plante and others.
University of Wisconsin Press 1991 237 pages

Ecstasy and terror: from the Greeks to Game of thrones

Mendelsohn, Daniel Adam
"In Ecstasy and Terror, Mendelsohn once again casts an eye at literature, film, television, and the personal essay, filtering his insights through his training as a scholar of classical antiquity in illuminating and sometimes surprising ways. Many of these essays look with fresh eyes at our culture's Greek and Roman models: some find an arresting modernity in canonical works (Bacchae, the Aeneid), while others detect a "Greek DNA" in our responses to national traumas such as the Boston Marathon bombings and the assassination of JFK. There are pieces on contemporary literature, from the "aesthetics of victimhood" in Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life to the uncomfortable mixture of art and autobiography in novels by Henry Roth, Ingmar Bergman, and Karl Ove Knausgard. Mendelsohn considers pop culture, too, in essays on the feminism of Game of Thrones and on recent films about artificial intelligence--a subject, he reminds us, that was already of interest to Homer. This collection also brings together for the first time a number of the award-winning memoirist's personal essays, including his "critic's manifesto" and a touching reminiscence of his boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, who inspired him to study the Classics."--
New York Review Books 2019 378 pages

Bad Girl

Viña Delmar
A daring novel that shocked the Jazz Age-and still burns with truth today. In Bad Girl, Viña Delmar rips the glittering mask off 1920s romance and exposes the real heartbeat of a generation caught between desire, convention, and survival. In roaring-era New York City, a young woman refuses to play by society's rules. She wants love-but she also wants freedom, respect, and a life that belongs to her alone. When Dorothy, a working-class shop girl with a wild streak, falls for Eddie, a man as stubborn and passionate as she is, their story explodes into a storm of love, pride, independence, and consequence. Beneath the flapper sparkle and jazz-club heat lies a deeply modern struggle: how far can a woman go to live life on her own terms before the world calls her a bad girl? First published in 1928, Bad Girl became an instant bestseller and scandal, earning Delmar both fame and controversy. Banned in some cities and celebrated in others, it was later adapted into an Oscar-winning Hollywood film-one of the first movies to portray love and marriage with raw honesty and emotional depth. Rediscovered today, this lost feminist classic captures the power and vulnerability of women carving out identity in a rapidly changing world. Bad Girl speaks directly to fans of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Anita Loos, and Edna Ferber-readers who crave authentic emotion, smart social commentary, and unforgettable storytelling.
Wilder Publications, Incorporated 2025-10-23 210 pages

In Another Place With and Without My Father, Norman Mailer

Susan Mailer
Norman Mailer, Susan Mailer's father, was among the most celebrated, talented, and controversial writers of the 20th Century. The Naked and the Dead (1948), inspired by his experience in World War II, was a bestseller and made him famous at the age of 25. Notoriously combative and egotistical, her father enjoyed a good fight both physically and verbally. Whether cheered or booed, Mailer was front and center in America's cultural battles for more than 50 years. He married six times and was father to nine children. Susan, born in 1949, is the eldest. Susan's parents separated when she was a baby. She grew up shuttling between her mother's home in Mexico and New York. Later she would marry a Chilean activist, spending the majority of her adult life in Chile, where she is a practicing psychoanalyst. In Another Place tells the story of her intense and complex relationship with her father, her five stepmothers and nine siblings, and the joys and pains of being part of the large Mailer clan. It is a tale of separation, and of the rewards and struggles of living in two very different cultures. Of being someone who belongs everywhere and nowhere, always longing for a life . . . In Another Place.
Northampton House Press 2020-09 318 pages

Matters of Choice (The Cole Trilogy)

Gordon, Noah
A woman physician confronts the moral issues of her time in the third novel in the New York Times–bestselling author’s historical medical trilogy. Roberta Jeanne d’Arc Cole is favored to be named associate chief of medicine at a Boston hospital. She is married to a surgeon. They own a trophy residence on historic Brattle Street in Cambridge and a summer house in the Berkshire Hills. Everything melts away. Her gender and her work at an abortion clinic cost her the hospital appointment. Her marriage fails. Crushed, she goes to the farmhouse in Western Massachusetts, thinking to sell it, and finds an unexpected life. How she continues to fight for every woman’s right to choose, while acknowledging her own ticking clock and maternal yearning, makes this prize-winning third story of the Cole trilogy as relevant as tomorrow.
Open Road Integrated Media, Inc. 2026-02-03 392 pages

Rainbow Jews: Jewish and gay identity in the performing arts

Friedman, Jonathan C.
Rainbow Jews looks at the intersection of gay and Jewish identity in American and Israeli film and theater from the 1960s to the present. Through a close reading of the texts of numerous American and Israeli plays and films, Friedman evaluates some of the key conventions that have been employed to construct, critique, and reflect the connection between Jewishness and gay identity in the United States and Israel. Friedman also explores ways in which gay-Jewish playwrights and filmmakers have progressed the reevaluation of sexual norms within Judaism over the past three decades, inspiring and integrating Jewish members of the GLBT community into the overall Jewish historical narrative.
Lexington Books 2007-01-01 203 pages

A Crackling of Thorns

John Hollander
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Creative Media Partners, LLC 2021-09-10 104 pages

Street Scene

Rice, Elmer L.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE In the bustling streets of early 20th-century New York City, the stoop of a nondescript brownstone serves as the central stage for the intricate dramas and poignant narratives that unfold in Elmer Rice's seminal work, "Street Scene." Premiering in 1929 at the Playhouse Theatre in New York City, this evocative play offers a profound exploration of the human condition amidst the backdrop of a gritty urban landscape. At the heart of the narrative are the Maurrant family—Anna, Rose, and Frank—whose lives intertwine with those of their neighbors in profound and often tumultuous ways. Anna Maurrant, a woman grappling with issues of infidelity and disillusionment in her marriage, finds herself entangled in a web of secrets and desires. Her daughter, Rose, struggles to navigate the demands of her job and the oppressive presence of her father, Frank, whose domineering and sometimes abusive behavior casts a shadow over their household. Against this backdrop of familial strife, the character of Sam Kaplan emerges as a beacon of empathy and compassion. A Jewish neighbor deeply in love with Rose, Sam serves as both a confidant and a source of solace amidst the chaos of their urban existence. His unwavering devotion to Rose illuminates the complexities of love and longing in a world marked by social and economic divides. As the action unfolds entirely on the front stoop of the brownstone and in the adjacent streets, Rice skillfully captures the rhythm and pulse of city life, infusing each scene with a palpable sense of immediacy and authenticity. From the colorful array of neighbors and passersby to the bustling energy of the urban milieu, "Street Scene" paints a vivid portrait of a community teetering on the brink of despair yet resilient in the face of adversity. Recipient of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1929, "Street Scene" remains a timeless testament to the enduring power of theater to illuminate the complexities of the human experience. Through its rich tapestry of characters and its evocative portrayal of urban life, Rice's play invites audiences to reflect on themes of love, longing, and the indomitable spirit of the human soul against the backdrop of a mean quarter of New York City.
Independently published 2024-03-21 121 pages

The land before her: fantasy and experience of the American frontiers, 1630-1860

Kolodny, Annette
To discover how women constructed their own mythology of the West, Kolodny examines the evidence of three generations of women's writing about the frontier. She finds that, although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated. Both intellectual and cultural history, this volume continues Kolodny's study of frontier mythology begun in The Lay of the Land .
University of North Carolina Press 1984 293 pages

Writing like a woman

Ostriker, Alicia
"'If we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly as we think, ' as Woolf puts it in A Room of One's Own , writing like a woman simply means writing like what one actually is, in sickness and health, richer and poorer, belly and bowels, the consonants and the vowels too. We may have a general sense that women poets are more likely than men, at the present time, to write in detail about their bodies; to take power relationships as a theme; to want to speak with a strong rather than a subdued voice; are less likely to seek distance, more likely to seek intimacy, in poetic tone. But generalization would be foolish here. 'Woman poet, ' like 'American poet' or 'French poet' or 'Russian poet, ' allows--even insists on--diversity, while implying something valuable in common, some shared language and life, of tremendous importance to the poet and the poet's readers." --Alicia Ostriker
Michigan U.P. 1983 147 pages

I want to be a mathematician: an automathography

Halmos, Paul R.
This is a book of aspirations fulfilled, those of the author and his colleagues. It tells us what it is to be a mathematician and to do mathematics. It will be read with interest and enjoyment by those in mathematics and by those who might want to know what mathematicians and mathematical careers are like. Halmos, mathematician and expositor, has contributed much to ergodic theory, algebraic logic, operator theory, and the mathematical literature in general.
Springer-Verlag 1985 421 pages