The poems in this anthology represent a panorama of the main trends in the development of the poetry of the German-speaking people. Beginning with a minnesong of the early Middle Ages and a poem of the seventeenth century, the book then focuses on the Age of Goethe (1749-1832). Inspired by Goethe and his contemporaries, German poetry was able to develop according to its own genius and to advance along new lines that eventually led to the period of Expressionism and Post-Expressionism with which this anthology ends. Included here are the full German texts of 39 poems-lyrics, ballads, philosophical verse, humor, student songs-and three selections from longer works by Goethe, Novalis and Lenau. Some of the other poets represented are Walther von der Vogelweide, Schiller, Hölderlin, Heine, Rilke, Brecht, Hermann Hesse, Stefan George, Gryphius, Platen, Scheffel, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and Albrecht Haushofer. For each poem, this book includes an expert literal English translation on the facing page. You'll also find a biographical and critical discussion of each poet, textual information and a portrait of the poet. Here is a wonderful opportunity to discover the depth and richness of the German poetic tradition, and learn the language at the same time.

"Jacob Neusner (born 1932) is one of the most important figures in the shaping of modern American Judaism. He was pivotal in transforming the study of Judaism from an insular project only conducted by--and of interest to--religious adherents to one which now flourishes in the secular setting of the university. He is also one of the most colorful, creative, and difficult figures in the American academy. But even those who disagree with Neusner's academic approach to ancient rabbinic texts have to engage with his pioneering methods. In this comprehensive biography, Aaron Hughes shows Neusner to be much more than a scholar of rabbinics. He is a social commentator, a post-Holocaust theologian, and was an outspoken political figure during the height of the cultural wars of the 1980s. Neusner's life reflects the story of what happened as Jews migrated to the suburbs in the late 1940s, daring to imagine new lives for themselves as they successfully integrated into the fabric of American society. It is also the story of how American Jews tried to make sense of the world in the aftermath of the extermination of European Jewry and the subsequent creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and how they sought to define what it meant to be an American Jew. Unlike other great American Jewish thinkers, Neusner was born in the U.S., and his Judaism was informed by an American ethos. His Judaism is open, informed by and informing the world. It is an American Judaism, one that has enabled American Jews--the freest in history--to be fully American and fully Jewish."--Publisher's description

Seven essays on science fiction: Introduction Robert Silverberg: sounding brass, tinkling cymbal Alfred Bester: my affair with science fiction Harry Harrison: the beginning of the affair Damon Knight: Knight piece Frederick Pohl: ragged claws Brian Aldiss: magic & bare boards Appendices: how we work, selected bibliographies

"In 1966, at the ripe age of 22, Richard Goldstein approached The Village Voice with a novel idea. "I want to be a rock critic," he said. "What's that?" the editor replied. It was a logical question, since rock criticism didn't yet exist. In the weekly column he would produce for the Voice, Goldstein became the first person to write regularly in a major publication about the music that changed our lives. He believed deeply in the power of rock, and, long before it was acceptable, he championed the idea that this music was a serious art form. From his unique position in journalism, he saw the full arc of events that shaped culture and politics in the 1960s--and participated in them, too. He toured with Janis Joplin, spent a day at the Grateful Dead house in San Francisco, and dropped acid with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. He was present for Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the student uprising at Columbia, and the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. He was challenged to a boxing match by Norman Mailer, and took Susan Sontag to her first disco. Goldstein developed close relationships with several rock legends--Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, to name two--and their early deaths came as a wrenching shock, fueling his disillusionment as he watched the music he loved rapidly evolve from a communal rite to a vast industry--and the sense of hope for radical social upheaval fade away. Another Little Piece of My Heart is the intimate memoir of the writer as a young man with profound ambition. It is also a sweeping personal account of a decade that no one else could provide--a deeply moving, unparalleled document of rock and revolution in America"--

Although A.B. Marx is not often acknowledged as such, he remains Western music's single most influential theorist, as the person who gave Sonata Form its name and codified its elements. Above a certain level of proficiency, there is not a single musician in the Western Classical tradition who does not know Sonata Form: they know Marx's legacy, if not his name. Further awareness of Marx as a man is especially important. The naming of Sonata form, and the discussion of its elements, was invested with convictions about music that Marx was among the very first to hold, and which we continue to value: for instance, that a composer's formal choices are not made just by convention, but with intention, and that the way in which a work unfolds is itself meaningful; or that music of any era reflects the aesthetic priorities of its age. Those convictions, in turn, spring from Marx's vigorous intellectual engagement with the world around him, its thinkers, its writers, and its politics. This translation provides a unique opportunity to read Marx in his own words. His Recollections from My Life were published in 1865, Marx's last book to appear during his lifetime, and have not been republished either in the German original, nor in any translation. Our translation with annotation and commentary will make available to English-readers this important view of music in Germany during the time of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and other familiar names from the concert hall.

The Jewish Encyclopedia was the first comprehensive collection of all the available material pertaining to the Jews their history, literature, philosophy, ritual, sociology, and biography. Published by Funk & Wagnalls from 1901 to 1906, its successful completion was due to the pluck and determination of its managing editor, Isidore Singer, and to the dedication of its other editors and collaborators, many of whom were world-renowned scholars. Today, the JE has been largely superseded as a reference work, but as a repository of information about Jews and Judaism in the late nineteenth century, it remains a gold mine. Part One of Schwartzs book recounts the lively story of the JEs publication the nascence of the idea, the negotiations with Funk & Wagnalls, the assembling of the board of editors, and the tensions, rivalries, and financial problems that constantly plagued the project. She introduces those who played leading roles in the numerous reviews and announcements that accompanied its publication, and evaluates its significance as the premier cultural event in American Jewish life at the dawn of the twentieth century. In Part Two, an analysis of the JEs contents reveals both the nature and extent of Jewish scholarship at the time and the goals and concerns of those who produced it. As Schwartz demonstrates, the JE marshaled its facts to combat both racial anti-Semitic arguments and Christian polemics. The work summarized, preserved, and expanded upon the results of Wissenschaft des Judentums. It provided the beginnings of a Jewish cultural response to the intellectual challenges of Darwinism and higher biblical criticism. And it presented the unique Reform and modern traditionalist perspectives on Jewish practice and belief. Throughout this fascinating study, Schwartz explores the complex and frequently strong relationships among Jewish leaders. Most importantly, she demonstrates that through its content as well as through the very fact of its publication in the United States and in English, the Jewish Encyclopedia signified the transfer of the center, language, and leadership of Jewish scholarship from the Old World to the New, thus becoming a primary catalyst for the emergence of Jewish scholarship in America.

Ask an old-timer what life was like in rural upstate New York during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and you will hear about the dances and bees that brought villagers and farmers together. You will hear of favorite fiddlers who held center stage with dance tunes taken from early British and American sources. You will hear of old-time music and its significance to a people making the transition from a rural, agricultural life to an urban, industrial one. Old-Time Music Makers of New York State is the first book published on this rich legacy of traditional Anglo-American music and dance. It traces the development of old-time music beginning with its movement into New York State from New England in the early nineteenth century and to its combination with commercial country music in the twentieth century. Exploring the regional character of the music and its meaning co the people who enjoy it, Bronner introduces memorable figures from the major periods in the development of old-time music, and he places their stories, their lives, and their music in the context of the region's cultural and historical changes. This is much more than a regional study, however. Bronner brings to the fore issues of national scope and interest. He discusses the relationship of old-time music to the commercial country music with which it has been closely aligned, and he challenges the prevailing wisdom that the origins of country music are in the South. Musician, fan, folklorist, and historian alike will benefit from and enjoy this book. The many musical transcriptions, annotations, photographs, and appendixes provide a valuable reference to be used again and again.

"First published in 1987, and encompassing texts from almost four decades, Kleist, moss, pheasants brings together autobiographical pieces, diary entries and reflections on fellow authors by Ilse Aichinger. As Richard Reichensperger remarks, the volume demonstrates the complex interconnections between historical events and Aichinger's life, thought and writing. The style, tone, and force of Kleist, moss, pheasants foreshadow the major achievements of Aichinger's late productive period around the turn of the millennium, which are evidenced in Film and fate and Improbable journeys."--Back cover.

Arguing that all human beings are incorrigibly autobiographical and that the most common mode of autobiography is oral and partial, this book maps out the diversity of autobiographical practices and seeks to introduce them to teachers and educators.

About the Author Jacob Neusner is Research Professor of Religion and Theology Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

"This volume celebrates the literary oeuvres of David Shrayer-Petrov-poet, fiction writer, memoirist, essayist, and literary translator (and medical doctor and researcher in his parallel career). Author of the refusenik novel Doctor Levitin, Shrayer-Petrov is one of the most important representatives of Jewish-Russian literature. Published in the year of Shrayer-Petrov's eighty-fifth birthday, thirty-five years after the writer's emigration from the former USSR, this is the first volume to gather materials and investigations that examine his writings from various literary-historical and theoretical perspectives. By focusing on many different aspects of Shrayer-Petrov's multifaceted and eventful literary career, the volume brings together some of the leading American, European, Israeli and Russian scholars of Jewish poetics, exilic literature, and Russian and Soviet culture and history. In addition to fifteen essays and an extensive interview with Shrayer-Petrov, the volume features a detailed bibliography and a pictorial biography"--

"The author has constructed a chronicle of the life of Ilia Zdanevich (known as Iliazd), an important writer and artist in Russian and French modernism, and enriched this chronicle with commentary on the process of writing a biography and a discussion of the twentieth-century avant-garde. The author originally researched Iliazd with the help of his widow many years ago, and she revisited her notes taken at that time with an experienced scholar's critical distance"--

This book explores two millennia of south Indian Tamil civilization, with a special emphasis on the way Tamil speakers and literati understood the unique features of their language and the major cultural themes articulated in Tamil over this long time span. Tamil is one of the great world languages, with its 80 million speakers, its ancient, classical past, and the profound richness of its cultural traditions, which spread throughout South Asia and beyond to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia and, today, to a large Tamil Diaspora scattered around the globe. Presented in the format of a south Indian musical composition, the chapters take the reader through the whole of Tamil cultural history, from its beginnings at the end of the first millennium B.C. through the stunning poems of love and war known as "Sangam Poetry", the burst of intense religious movements in the mid-first-millennium A.D., the Chola period of imperial expansion, and into late-medieval and modern times, including present-day Tamil politics and the vast cultural production of Chennai, Madurai, and Tanjavur. The treasures of the Tamil language deserve a wide audience--thus the book is aimed at readers with no special knowledge of India no less than at speakers and connoisseurs of Tamil. Translated verses and spicy stories of poets, lovers, musicians, warriors and kings fill the pages of this book, which paints a wide-angle, panoramic canvas of one of the most creative civilizations in the history of South Asia as it evolved and transformed itself from the distant past up to our own generation.--