Fate and Freedom in the Novels of David Adams Richards


Book Description

This book explores the understanding of freedom developed in the later novels of celebrated Canadian author, David Adams Richards. Many reviewers highlight two interconnected features in Richards novels: a seemingly rigid determinism of setting and sociodemographics, and a resulting hopelessness. In contrast, Richards describes the quest of human life and the purpose of his novels as a search for freedom. This book explores the account of freedom that is developed through the course of four of Richards’s works: The Friends of Meager Fortune, Mercy Among the Children, The Lost Highway, and Crimes Against My Brother. Following the Augustinian thread that informs Richards’s writing, we argue that rather than presenting an understanding of human life that is bleak or hopeless, Richards instead reveals an argument wherein one’s happiness and freedom is found in the midst of love.




The Coen Brothers and the Comedy of Democracy


Book Description

Both critically and commercially successful filmmakers, the Coen brothers have written, produced, and directed numerous acclaimed films over the past three decades. Sara MacDonald and Barry Craig demonstrate that their comedies, in particular, which are often dismissed as mere entertainments, actually present substantial philosophic and political arguments. They examine five of the Coen brothers’ comedies: Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou, and Hail Caesar!. In those works, they discover insightful engagements with such ideas as questions of human freedom, the relationship of reason to religion, and the nature of liberal democracy in the American regime. They demonstrate how sometimes explicitly, but generally implicitly, the Coens draw on thinkers such as Homer, Plato, Dante, and Hegel, while simultaneously presenting popular entertainment.




Canadian Conservative Political Thought


Book Description

This book corrects an imbalance in Canadian political literature through offering a conservative account of Canadian political thought. Across 15 chronologically organized chapters, and with a mixture of established and rising scholars, the book offers an investigation of the defining features and characteristics of Canadian conservative political thought, asking what have Canadian conservative political thinkers and practitioners learned from other traditions and, in turn, what have they contributed to our understanding of conservative political thought today? Rather than its culmination, Canadian Conservative Political Thought will be the beginning of conservative political thought’s recovery and will spark debates and future research. The book will be a great resource for courses on Canadian politics, history, political philosophy and conservatism, Canadian Studies, and political theory.




Fate and Freedom


Book Description

The conclusion of the international award-winning historical series, Fate & Freedom.




Fate and Freedom


Book Description

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.







David Adams Richards of the Miramichi


Book Description

In David Adams Richards of the Miramichi, Tony Tremblay sheds light not only on Richards' art and achievements, but also on Canadian literary criticism in general.




Canadian Writers and Their Works


Book Description

A study of the Canadian fiction writers Sandra Birdsell, Timothy Findley, W.P. Kinsella, and David Adams Richards.




Comparative Literature in Canada


Book Description

This timely volume takes stock of the discipline of comparative literature and its theory and practice from a Canadian perspective. It engages with the most pressing critical issues at the intersection of comparative literature and other areas of inquiry in the context of scholarship, pedagogy and academic publishing: bilingualism and multilingualism, Indigeneity, multiple canons (literary and other), the relationship between print culture and other media, the development of information studies, concerted efforts in digitization, and the future of the production and dissemination of knowledge. The authors offer an analysis of the current state of Canadian comparative literature, with a dual focus on the issues of multilingualism in Canada’s sociopolitical and cultural context and Canada’s geographical location within the Americas. It also discusses ways in which contemporary technology is influencing the way that Canadian literature is taught, produced, and disseminated, and how this affects its readings.




Excellent Women


Book Description

Excellent Women is probably the most famous of Barbara Pym's novels. The acclaim a few years ago for this early comic novel, which was hailed by Lord David Cecil as one of 'the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past seventy-five years,' helped launch the rediscovery of the author's entire work. Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman's daughter and a spinster in the England of the 1950s, one of those 'excellent women' who tend to get involved in other people's lives - such as those of her new neighbor, Rockingham, and the vicar next door. This is Barbara Pym's world at its funniest.