"The modern literary critic", T. S. Eliot wrote in 1929, "must be an 'experimenter' outside of what you might at first consider his own province; [...] there is no literary problem which does not lead us irresistibly to larger problems." This book follows Eliot's principle and situates his literary and critical work in a wide context that reveals manifold links between aesthetics, ethics, politics and epistemology: the historical context of early-twentieth-century idealism, vitalism and pragmatism, especially the intensely political Bergsonian controversy, and the modern context of the philosophies of Charles Taylor, Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty. 'Knowledge', it argues, was verbalised in the modernist age, individualised into the act of 'knowing', an act with motives and goals, and thus introduced into the realm of ethics - a process central to twentieth-century thought. Eliot's poems especially, constructed as "a life composed", a literary lifetime linking composition and composure, ponder the virtue of precision, the sins of pride and "mental sloth", the temptation of prejudice and the need for conviction. Decidedly tentative, Eliot's poems solve the problem of morally significant literature. In a century of suspicion, they ask the crucial question of where one should start to rely.

This reissue of Bateson's treatise on the improvisational lives of five extraordinary women uses their personal stories to delve into the creative potential of the complex lives of today, where ambitions are constantly refocused on new goals and possibilities.

More than a book of popular quotes, this volume is a powerful reference tool for some of the most frequently-cited poems, news articles, fiction, memoir, history, and creative nonfiction on the web. It also provides the largest single selection of quotes by the author, many available only in these pages, including the entire special section titled TAO OF THE RAINBOW. In addition, the book as a whole demonstrates the ability of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Google+ to help make positive and inspiring differences in 21st-century life. "Journey through the Power of the Rainbow represents a condensed compendium of literary efforts from a life dedicated to transforming the themes of injustice, grief, and despair that we all encounter during some unavoidable point of our existence into a sustainable life-affirming poetics of passionate creativity, empowered spiritual vision, and inspired commitment." --Aberjhani, from Journey through the Power of the Rainbow

WINNER OF THE BEST PUBLISHED ATLANTIC BOOK AWARD FOR 2006 PRESENTED BY THE ATLANTIC PUBLISHERS MARKETING ASSOCIATION. This volume celebrates the life and work of Helen and Reginald Shepherd and at the same time assesses their contribution to the visual arts in Newfoundland. It begins with an introduction by Ronald Rompkey to situate the Shepherds in the post-Confederation cultural milieu, followed by a general biographical and historical essay by Peter Gard, who wrote the catalogue for the AGNL exhibition "Helen Parsons Shepherd and Reginald Shepherd: Four Decades" in 1989. Next, jou alist and playwright Joan Sullivan explores through interviews with former students the environment created at the Newfoundland Academy of Art at 51 Cochrane Street. Lisa Moore, a fiction writer who also possesses a degree in visual art from NSCAD, follows with an investigation of the portrait as an art form and Helen Parsons Shepherd's career as a portraitist. The volume concludes with an essay on early printmaking in Newfoundland and Reginald Shepherd's work in this medium by Anne Pratt, who has had considerable experience as an art jou alist and critic. These essays constitute approximately half the volume, the remainder consisting of illustrations from the work of both artists.

Moscow in the middle of the seventeenth century had a distinctly apocalyptic feel. An outbreak of the plague killed half the population. A solar eclipse and comet appeared in the sky, causing panic. And a religious reform movement intended to purify spiritual life and provide for the needy had become a violent political project that cleaved Russian society and the Orthodox Church in two. The autobiography of Archpriest Avvakum—a leader of the Old Believers, who opposed liturgical and ecclesiastical reforms—provides a vivid account of these cataclysmic events from a figure at their center. Written in the 1660s and ’70s from a cell in an Arctic village where the archpriest had been imprisoned by the tsar, Avvakum’s autobiography is a record of his life, ecclesiastical career, painful exile, religious persecution, and imprisonment. It is also a salvo in a contest about whether to follow the old Russian Orthodox liturgy or import Greek rites and practices. These concerns touched every stratum of Russian society—and for Avvakum, represented an urgent struggle between good and evil. Avvakum’s autobiography has been a cornerstone of Russian literature since it first circulated among religious dissidents. One of the first Russian-language autobiographies and works of any sort to make use of colloquial Russian, its language and style served as a model for writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Gorky. The Life Written by Himself is not only an important historical document but also an emotionally charged and surprisingly conversational self-portrait of a crucial figure in a tumultuous time.

Bestselling new women's author and conference speaker Smith gets to the heart of beauty in brokenness; the cracks that show in people's lives don't eliminate the ability to magnify God.