Author : Ted Gioia
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 332 pages
File Size : 17,32 MB
Release : 2015
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0199357579
Uncovers the unexplored history of the love song, from the fertility rites of ancient cultures to the sexualized YouTube videos of the present day, and discusses such topics as censorship, the legacy of love songs, and why it is a dominant form of modern musical expression.
Author : Nino Tsitsishvili
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 21,36 MB
Release : 2022-11-18
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 1527590704
The book offers a radically new perspective on the origins of the love song and human sexuality in an evolutionary context. By comparing different human societies and animal species, past and present, it reveals that love songs, romantic love and exclusive pair-bonds are not the original evolutionary features of Homo sapiens. One of the key findings of the book is that early humans practiced multiple-partner sexual relations, similar to our closest relatives bonobos and chimpanzees, but, with the emergence of culture and sexual taboo, their behaviour had to adjust. It contends that, since the exodus from Africa and the rise of culture, humans started to distance themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom, drastically restraining their innate sexual nature. The book will appeal to both scholars and laypeople with an interest in evolutionary theory, socio-biology, anthropology, and the origins of culture.
Author : Andrew Wilson
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 549 pages
File Size : 24,34 MB
Release : 2013-01-31
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0857205900
On 25 February 1956, twenty-three-year-old Sylvia Plath walked into a party and immediately spotted Ted Hughes. This encounter - now one of the most famous in all literary history - was recorded by Plath in her journal, where she described Hughes as a 'big, dark, hunky boy'. Sylvia viewed Ted as something of a colossus, and to this day his enormous shadow has obscured Plath's life and work. The sensational aspects of the Plath-Hughes relationship have dominated the cultural landscape to such an extent that their story has taken on the resonance of a modern myth. After Plath's suicide in February 1963, Hughes became Plath's literary executor, the guardian of her writings, and, in effect responsible for how she was perceived. But Hughes did not think much of Plath's prose writing, viewing it as a 'waste product' of her 'false self', and his determination to market her later poetry - poetry written after she had begun her relationship with him - as the crowning glory of her career, has meant that her other earlier work has been marginalised. Before she met Ted, Plath had lived a complex, creative and disturbing life. Her father had died when she was only eight, she had gone out with literally hundreds of men, had been unofficially engaged, had tried to commit suicide and had written over 200 poems. Mad Girl's Love Songwill trace through these early years the sources of her mental instabilities and will examine how a range of personal, economic and societal factors - the real disquieting muses - conspired against her. Drawing on exclusive interviews with friends and lovers who have never spoken openly about Plath before and using previously unavailable archives and papers, this is the first book to focus on the early life of the twentieth century's most popular and enduring female poet. Mad Girl's Love Songreclaims Sylvia Plath from the tangle of emotions associated with her relationship with Ted Hughes and reveals the origins of her unsettled and unsettling voice, a voice that, fifty years after her death, still has the power to haunt and disturb.
Author : Thomas Stearns Eliot
Publisher :
Page : 28 pages
File Size : 19,72 MB
Release : 1986
Category :
ISBN :
Author : Harry Eiss
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 417 pages
File Size : 49,53 MB
Release : 2022-03-22
Category : Poetry
ISBN : 1527581675
Do I dare disturb the universe? This is a question recognized by people around the world. If typed into the internet, hundreds of examples appear. Many know that it comes from one of the best-known poems of the previous century, T. S. Eliotâs The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. What many do not know is that Eliot dramatically shifted his views at the height of his fame for writing such dark poetry as this and The Waste Land, becoming a sincere, devoted Christian. While his poetry is famous because it expresses the loss of a spiritual center in European civilization, a careful reading of it reveals that he was struggling with his Christianity from the beginning, not rejecting it, but trying to make it fit into the contemporary world. If the reader works through Eliotâs love song for all of the esoteric meanings, as he demands, it quickly becomes evident that he intended it as a struggle between agape, amour and eros. Beginning it with a quote from Dante forces that into place. Though the protestant forms of Christianity have changed their views on these, the Roman Catholic holds fast. Eliot references Michelangelo in the poem, bringing in the great painter of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Most immediately recognize his name and work, but do not realize how he expressed a similar personal struggle between the desires of the flesh and the spirit. Both of them admired Danteâs Divine Comedy, and its inclusion of amour as a means to salvation. Danteâs work is generally seen as the greatest literature ever to come out of Italy. This book is an expanded revision of Seeking God in the Works of T. S. Eliot and Michelangelo. It explores how T.S Eliot struggled with the highest meanings of existence in his poetry and his own life, and perhaps managed to express what has become known as a modernist (and post-modernist) view of what Rudolph Otto designated the mysterium tremendum, the experience of a mystical awe, the experience of God.
Author : Andrew Ford
Publisher : La Trobe University Press
Page : 315 pages
File Size : 30,19 MB
Release : 2019-12-02
Category : Music
ISBN : 1743821069
An illuminating history of the song for every kind of music lover Often today, the word ‘song’ is used to describe all music. A free-jazz improvisation, a Hindustani raga, a movement from a Beethoven symphony: apparently, they’re all songs. But they’re not. From Sia to Springsteen, Archie Roach to Amy Winehouse, a song is a specific musical form. It’s not so much that they all have verses and choruses – though most of them do – but that they are all relatively short and self-contained; they have beginnings, middles and ends; they often have a single point of view, message or story; and, crucially, they unite words and music. Thus, a Schubert song has more in common with a track by Joni Mitchell or Rihanna than with one of Schubert’s own symphonies. The Song Remains the Same traces these connections through seventy-five songs from different cultures and times: love songs, anthems, protest songs, lullabies, folk songs, jazz standards, lieder and pop hits; ‘When You Wish Upon a Star’ to ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘Jerusalem’ to ‘Jolene’. Unpicking their inner workings makes familiar songs strange again, explaining and restoring the wonder, joy (or possibly loathing) the reader experienced on first hearing. ‘As much about singing, musicianship and recording as it is about songwriting, this eclectic ride through a unique choice of songs (everyone will argue for alternatives) is cleverly curated and littered with intriguing details about the creators and their times, filled with loving cross-references to other songs and deft musical analysis. I defy anyone not to leap online to listen to the unfamiliar, or re-listen to old favourites in light of new detail. One of the best games in this book is figuring out why one song follows the other: there’s always an intelligent, often very funny, link.’ —Robyn Archer
Author : Mari Sandoz
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 23,85 MB
Release : 2024-05-16
Category : History
ISBN : 1496240820
Love Song to the Plains is a lyric salute to the earth and sky and people who made the history of the Great Plains by the region's incomparable historian, Mari Sandoz. It is a story of men and women of many hues—courageous, violent, indomitable, foolish—their legends, failures, and achievements: of explorers and fur trappers and missionaries; of soldiers and army posts and Indian fighting; of California-bound emigrants who stopped off to become settlers; of cattlemen and bad men, boomers and land speculators, and their feuds and rivalries. Above all, this is a portrait of the true Plainsman, the man or woman who can stand to have the horizon far off and every day, every year, a gamble.
Author : Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
Publisher : HarperCollins
Page : 816 pages
File Size : 30,22 MB
Release : 2021-08-24
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0062942964
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2021 AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FOR DEBUT NOVEL • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION • A FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION • SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE • A NOMINEE FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD A New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • A Time Must-Read Book of the Year • A Washington Post 10 Best Books of the Year • A Oprah Daily Top 20 Books of the Year • A People 10 Best Books of the Year • A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year • A BookPage Best Fiction Book of the Year • A Booklist 10 Best First Novels of the Year • A Kirkus 100 Best Novels of the Year • An Atlanta Journal-Constitution 10 Best Southern Books of the Year • A Parade Pick • A Chicago Public Library Top 10 Best Books of the Year • A KCRW Top 10 Books of the Year An Instant Washington Post, USA Today, and Indie Bestseller "Epic…. I was just enraptured by the lineage and the story of this modern African-American family…. A combination of historical and modern story—I’ve never read anything quite like it. It just consumed me." —Oprah Winfrey, Oprah Book Club Pick An Indie Next Pick • A New York Times Book Everyone Will Be Talking About • A People 5 Best Books of the Summer • A Good Morning America 15 Summer Book Club Picks • An Essence Best Book of the Summer • A Washington Post 10 Books of the Month • A CNN Best Book of the Month • A Time 11 Best Books of the Month • A Ms. Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A BookPage Writer to Watch • A USA Today Book Not to Miss • A Chicago Tribune Summer Must-Read • An Observer Best Summer Book • A Millions Most Anticipated Book • A Ms. Book of the Month • A Well-Read Black Girl Book Club Pick • A BiblioLifestyle Most Anticipated Literary Book of the Summer • A Deep South Best Book of the Summer • Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award The 2020 NAACP Image Award-winning poet makes her fiction debut with this National Book Award-longlisted, magisterial epic—an intimate yet sweeping novel with all the luminescence and force of Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era. The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders. Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.
Author : Minnie Darke
Publisher : Random House
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 40,26 MB
Release : 2020-03-03
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1473562546
A feel-good romance by the author of Star-crossed, perfect for anyone who loves David Nicholls, Marian Keyes and Jojo Moyes. Arie and Diana were destined to be together. Arie falls for Diana in a heartbeat. Their love creates a life for them, a marriage and a home. Pianist Diana wants to capture this in a song for Arie. But that’s not where the story ends... After Diana debuts their song to a room full of strangers, tragedy strikes and Arie never gets to hear it. There’s still a verse to come. Diana’s melody lives beyond her and the lost love song begins to find its way back home. Can it help Arie to find new hope, and a new love? Readers love Minnie Darke 'Witty, mischievous and intelligent... if you enjoy Marian Keyes or Mhairi McFarlane, you'll enjoy this. 'A clever and witty comedy' 'Warm, funny, addictive, I couldn’t put it down.' 'A smart and funny novel' 'Beautifully written with warmth and wit... a truly delightful read.' 'Uplifting, romantic and fabulous... I loved this charming book.'
Author : Peter Conrad
Publisher :
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 42,52 MB
Release : 1996-03
Category : Music
ISBN :
A Song of Love and Death examines the art of opera with the same creative insight that Susan Sontag's On Photography brought to its medium. It is an eloquent inquiry into the meaning of our boldest art, its expression of human irrationality and its power to disturb and excite us.
