What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High Priest of Art? Court Jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as 'gifted', who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift? Margaret Atwood's wide reference to other writers is balanced by anecdotes from her own experiences, both in Canada and on the international scene. The lightness of her touch is underlined by a seriousness about the purpose and the pleasures of writing, and by a deep familiarity with the myths and traditions of Western literature.

The End of the Salon examines the cultural forces that contributed to the demise of the most important exhibition centre for art in Europe and America in the late nineteenth century. Tracing the history of the salon from the French Revolution, when it was taken away from the Academy and opened to all artists, to the 1880s, Patricia Mainardi shows that its contradictory purposes, as didactic exhibition venue and art market place, resulted in its collapse. She also situates the salon within the shifting currents of art movements, from modern to traditional, and the evolving politics of the Third Republic, when France definitively chose a republican over a monarchic form of government. The book, which was originally published in 1993, demonstrates how all artists were forced to function within the framework of the social, economic and cultural changes then taking place and how art and social history are inextricably linked.

Lawrence's work is placed in the context of developments in the tradition of Romantic poet-philosophers and visionary thinkers. Robert E. Montgomery shows how Lawrence reacted to the work of Nietzsche, Heraclitus and Jacob Boehme, where he found ideas similar to his own and precedents for his attempts to evolve a new mode of prophetic-poetical-philosophical discourse, and how Lawrence's place in the visionary tradition differs from that of contemporaries Eliot and Yeats. The result is an exploration of the complex vision that informs and unifies Lawrence's work.

This collection of original essays is a comprehensive survey of the life, works and times of this radical Romantic poet. With its chronology and guide to further reading, this lively and accessible Companion is an invaluable guide for students and scholars of Shelley and of Romanticism.

Wallace Stevens is a major American poet and a central figure in modernist studies and twentieth-century poetry. This Companion introduces students to his work. An international team of distinguished contributors presents a unified picture of Stevens' poetic achievement. The Introduction explains why Stevens is among the world's great poets and offers specific guidance on how to read and appreciate his poetry. A brief biographical sketch anchors Stevens in the real world and illuminates important personal and intellectual influences. The essays following chart Stevens' poetic career and his affinities with both earlier and contemporary writers, artists, and philosophers. Other essays introduce students to the peculiarity and distinctiveness of Stevens' voice and style. They explain prominent themes in his work and explore the nuances of his aesthetic theory. With a detailed chronology and a guide to further reading, this Companion provides all the information a student or scholar of Stevens will need.

Plato's Meno and Phaedo are two of the most important works of ancient western philosophy and continue to be studied around the world. The Meno is a seminal work of epistemology. The Phaedo is a key source for Platonic metaphysics and for Plato's conception of the human soul. Together they illustrate the birth of Platonic philosophy from Plato's reflections on Socrates' life and doctrines. This edition offers new and accessible translations of both works, together with a thorough introduction that explains the arguments of the two dialogues and their place in Plato's thought.

For Michel Foucault, philosophy was a way of questioning the allegedly necessary truths that underpin the practices and institutions of modern society. The essays in this volume provide a comprehensive overview of Foucault's major themes and texts, from his early work on madness through his history of sexuality. Special attention is also paid to thinkers and movements, from Kant through current feminist theory, that are particularly important for understanding his work and its impact. This revised edition contains five new essays and revisions of many others, and the extensive bibliography has been updated. First Edition Hb (1994) 0-521-40332-4 First Edition PB (1994) 0-521-40887-3

Charles Baudelaire's place among the great poets of the Western world is undisputed, and his influence on the development of poetry since his lifetime has been enormous. In this Companion, essays by outstanding scholars illuminate Baudelaire's writing both for the lay reader and for specialists. Featuring a guide to further reading and a chronology, this Companion provides students and scholars of Baudelaire and of nineteenth-century French and European literature with a comprehensive and stimulating overview of this extraordinary poet.

Originally published in German under the title Holzwege, this collection of texts is Heidegger's first post-war work and contains some of the major expositions of his later philosophy. Although translations of the essays have appeared individually in a variety of places, this is the first English translation to bring them together as Heidegger intended. It is an invaluable resource for all students of Heidegger, whether they study philosophy, literary theory, religious studies, or intellectual history.

Reflections on literature: The idea of an 'English school' ; Our English syllabus ; Image and imagination ; Arundell Esdaile, The sources of English literature ; W.P. Ker, Form and style in poetry : lectures and notes, ed. R.W. Chambers ; Denis de Rougemont, Poetry and society and Claude Chavasse, The bride of Christ ; Oliver Elton (1861-1945) : an obituary ; Howard Rollin Patch, The other world, according to descriptions in medieval literature ; Werner Schwarz, Principles and problems of Biblical translation ; Tragic ends : George Steiner, The death of tragedy ; Eros on the loose : David Loth, The erotic in literature
The Inklings : Barfield, Tolkien, and Williams: Who gaf me drink? : Owen Barfield, Romanticism comes of age ; G.A.L. Burgeon (= Owen Barfield), This ever diverse pair ; A world for children : J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and back again ; Professor Tolkien's hobbit : J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and back again ; The gods return to earth : J.R.R. Tolkien, The fellowship of the ring (being the first part of The lord of the rings) ; The dethronement of power : J.R.R. Tolkien, The two towers (being the second part of The lord of the rings) and The return of the king (being the third part of The lord of the rings) ; Preface from Essays presented to Charles Williams, ed. C.S. Lewis ; A sacred poem : Charles Williams, Taliessin through Logres ; Charles Williams, Taliessin through Logres ; Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886-1945) : an obituary
Reflections on Christianity and literature: A lectionary of Christian prose from the second century to the twentieth century, ed. A.C. Bouquet ; The Oxford book of Christian verse, ed. Lord David Cecil ; Dorothy L. Sayers, The mind of the maker ; Selected sermons : A selection from the occasional sermons of Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, ed. Evelyn Waugh ; Foreword to Joy Davidman, Smoke on the mountain : an interpretation of the ten commandments ; Preface to Austin Farrer, A faith of our own
Classical literature: Odysseus sails again : The odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald ; Ajax and others : John Jones, On Aristotle and Greek tragedy ; Lucretius ; T.R. Henn, Longinus and English criticism ; Helen M. Barrett, Boethius : some aspects of his times and work
Medieval and Renaissance literature: Ruth Mohl, The three estates in medieval and Renaissance literature ; J.W.H. Atkins, English literary criticism : the medieval phase ; Arthuriana : Arthurian literature in the middle ages : a collaborative study, ed. R.S. Loomis ; Introduction from Selections from Lazamon's Brut, ed. G.L. Brook ; Andreas Capellanus, The art of courtly love, with introduction, translation, and notes by John Jay Parry ; Rhyme and reason : Dorothy L. Sayers, The poetry of search and the poetry of statement ; Alan M.F. Gunn, The mirror of love : a reinterpretation of The romance of the rose ; The English prose Morte ; Leone Ebreo, The philosophy of love (dialoghi d'amore), trans. J. Friedeberg-Seeley and Jean H. Barnes, and intro. Cecil Roth ; E.K. Chambers, Sir Thomas Wyatt and some collected studies ; M. Pauline Parker, The allegory of the Faerie queene ; John Vyvyan, Shakespeare and the rose of love
Milton and later English literature: Logan Pearsall Smith, Milton and his modern critics ; Douglas Bush, Paradise lost in our time : some comments ; H.W. Garrod, Collins ; Hugh Kingsmill, Matthew Arnold ; Evelyn Waugh, Rossetti : his life and works ; Boswell's bugbear : Sir John Hawkins, The life of Samuel Johnson, ed. Bertram Hylton Davis ; Poetry and exegesis : Harold Bloom, The visionary company : a reading of English romantic poetry ; The sagas and modern life : Morris, Mr. Yeats, and the originals : Dorothy M. Hoare, The works of Morris and of Yeats in relation to early saga literature ; Haggard rides again : Morton Cohen, Rider Haggard : his life and works.

By offering a fresh look at Bishop criticism that has moved from purely formal concerns and post-modern interpretations to more recent feminist analysis, Victoria Harrison traces Elizabeth Bishop's career, dividing her work into three chronological periods of activity: her early work, her writing in Brazil, and her late retrospective verse. By examining letters and notebooks, Harrison unfolds the biographical events that influenced Bishop's poetic style, addressing her treatment of such topics as family relations, history, politics, war, love, sexuality and ethnic differences. Elizabeth Bishop's Poetics of Intimacy delves extensively into the Bishop archives. Making wider use of Bishop's unpublished work, Harrison explores Bishop's childhood memoirs, journals, letters, Brazilian travel prose, unfinished poems and draft material. The reproduction of these archival materials - with revisions, cancelled lines, notes - shows a mind at work and a career in evolution.

This 2011 book examines the conceptual and temporal frames through which modern Western historiography has linked itself to classical antiquity. In doing so, it articulates a genealogical problematic of what history is and a more strictly focused reappraisal of Greek and Roman historical thought. Ancient ideas of history have played a key role in modern debates about history writing, from Kant through Hegel to Nietzsche and Heidegger, and from Friedrich Creuzer through George Grote and Theodor Mommsen to Momigliano and Moses Finley; yet scholarship has paid little attention to the theoretical implications of the reception of these ideas. The essays in this collection cover a wide range of relevant topics and approaches and boast distinguished authors from across Europe in the fields of classics, ancient and modern history and the theory of historiography.

Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) is one of the most important German philosophers of the eighteenth century, who had enormous influence on later thinkers such as Hegel, Schleiermacher and Nietzsche. His wide-ranging ideas were formative in the development of linguistics, hermeneutics, anthropology and bible scholarship, and even today they retain their vitality and relevance to an extraordinary degree. This volume presents a translation of Herder's most important and characteristic philosophical writings (some of which have never before been translated) in his areas of central interest, including philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of history and political philosophy, as well as his general philosophical program. An introduction sets the writings in their historical context and examines their philosophical achievement.

Claude Levi-Strauss is one of the major thinkers of the modern age. Regarded as a crucial figure in the development of structuralism, his writings are studied across a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, philosophy and literary studies. The Cambridge Companion to Levi-Strauss presents a major reassessment of his work and influence. The fifteen specially-commissioned essays in this volume engage with the controversies that have surrounded his ideas, and they probe the concealed influences and cliches that have obscured a true understanding of his work. The contributors are experts drawn from a number of fields, demonstrating the durability and importance of Levi-Strauss's work in the academy. Written for students and researchers alike, these incisive, jargon-free essays will be essential reading for anybody who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of this important thinker.

If faraway peoples have different ideas from our own, is this because they have different mentalities? Did our remote ancestors lack logic? The notion of distinct mentalities has been used extensively by historians to describe and explain cultural diversity. Professor Lloyd rejects this psychologising talk of mentalities and proposes an alternative approach, which takes as its starting point the social contexts of communication. Discussing apparently irrational beliefs and behaviour (such as magic), he shows how different forms of thought coexist in a single culture but within conventionally defined contexts.