"This cleverly conceived book relates Denis Diderot and Andre Gide to each other as well as to their separate centuries ... Using a binocular approach similar to the double-spotlight technique of the theater, Professor Laidlaw juxtaposes the lives, works, and philosophies of the two French writers. Constant questioning, agnosticism to the deathbed, and voluminous literary output characterize both. Their catholic interests -- in science, in poetry and drama, in Russian ways as well as French behavior -- are similar. [Laidlaw] discusses their common concern with the dilemma of morality and sincerity, their fascination with literal or figurative blindness, their attitudes toward death, their strong sense of paradox, and the delight and inspiration they both drew from foolishness"--

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A Stanford University Press classic.

The original edition of Beyond and Before extends an understanding of “progressive rock” by providing a fuller definition of what progressive rock is, was and can be. Called by Record Collector “the most accomplished critical overview yet” of progressive rock and one of their 2011 books of the year, Beyond and Before moves away from the limited consensus that prog rock is exclusively English in origin and that it was destroyed by the advent of punk in 1976. Instead, by tracing its multiple origins and complex transitions, it argues for the integration of jazz and folk into progressive rock and the extension of prog in Kate Bush, Radiohead, Porcupine Tree and many more. This 10-year anniversary revised edition continues to further unpack definitions of progressive rock and includes a brand new chapter focusing on post-conceptual trends in the 2010s through to the contemporary moment. The new edition discusses the complex creativity of progressive metal and folk in greater depth, as well as new fusions of genre that move across global cultures and that rework the extended form and mission of progressive rock, including in recent pop concept albums. All chapters are revised to keep the process of rethinking progressive rock alive and vibrant as a hybrid, open form.

Writing is an amazing journey. A beautiful process of inking our thoughts. My 30 divinely inspired co-authours has bended their thoughts and emotions waved in poems and short stories. The writing given by my co-authours are beautiful , perfect and creative like the name of this book " Elysian"..... Elysian beauty , melancholy, grace , brought from a pensive though a happy place ~said by William Wordsworth

The culmination of a lifetime's fascination with humour in all its forms, this book is the first in any language to embrace such an impressive span of authors and such a broad range of topics in French literary humour. In nine wide-ranging chapters Walter Redfern considers diverse writers and topics, including: Diderot, viewed as a laughing philosopher, mainly through his fiction (Les Bijoux indiscrets, Le Neeu de Rameau, and Jacques le fataliste); humourlessness, corraling Rousseau, Sade, the Christian God, and Jean-Pierre Brisset; the aesthete Huysmans, in both his avatars, Symbolist and Naturalist (A Rebours, Sac au dos, and other texts); the dramatic use of parrots by Flaubert, Queneau, and Beckett; Vallès and la blague; exaggeration in Vallès and Céline (Mort à credit and L'Enfant); the fiction, plays, and autobiography of Sartre; bad jokes in Beckett; wordplay in Tournier's fiction (especially Roi des aulnes and Les Météores). Five interleaved 'riffs' on laughter, dreams, black humour, politics, and taste, carry the enquiry into questions of humour outside of the purely French context, enhancing a book that impresses as much with its vivacity of style as with the breadth and depth of its scholarship.