Proposes a theoretically rich treatment of temporality within exile as “gerundive” time. This book is a philosophical reflection on the experience of time from within exile. Its focus on temporality is unique, as most literature on exile focuses on the experience of space, as exile involves dislocation, and moods of nostalgia and utopia. Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback proposes that in exile, time is experienced neither as longing back to the lost past nor as wanting a future to come but rather as a present without anchors or supports. She articulates this present as a “gerundive” mode, in which the one who is in exile discovers herself simply being, exposed to the uncanny experience of having lost the past and not having a future. To explore this, she establishes a conversation among three authors whose work has exemplified this sense of gerundive time: the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, the French writer and essayist Maurice Blanchot, and the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. The book does not aim to discuss how these authors understand the relation between time and exile, but presents a conversation with them in relation to this question that reflects new aspects in their work. Attempting to think and express this difficult sense of time from within exile, Time in Exile engages with the relation between thought and language, and between philosophy and literature. Departing from concrete existential questions, Sá Cavalcante Schuback reveals new philosophical and theoretical modes to understand what it means to be present in times of exile. “It is very rare that one can find in philosophy a book that has been written neither as a commentary, nor as an exegesis of the authors in question, but rather as an original and thought-provoking reflection in which the author is the main philosophical voice in the book.” — María del Rosario Acosta López, coeditor of Aesthetic Reason and Imaginative Freedom: Fredrich Schiller and Philosophy

“The role of the critic,” Daniel Mendelsohn writes, “is to mediate intelligently and stylishly between a work and its audience; to educate and edify in an engaging and, preferably, entertaining way.” His latest collection exemplifies the range, depth, and erudition that have made him “required reading for anyone interested in dissecting culture” (The Daily Beast). In Ecstasy and Terror, Mendelsohn once again casts an eye at literature, film, television, and the personal essay, filtering his insights through his training as a scholar of classical antiquity in illuminating and sometimes surprising ways. Many of these essays look with fresh eyes at our culture’s Greek and Roman models: some find an arresting modernity in canonical works (Bacchae, the Aeneid), while others detect a “Greek DNA” in our responses to national traumas such as the Boston Marathon bombings and the assassination of JFK. There are pieces on contemporary literature, from the “aesthetics of victimhood” in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life to the uncomfortable mixture of art and autobiography in novels by Henry Roth, Ingmar Bergman, and Karl Ove Knausgård. Mendelsohn considers pop culture, too, in essays on the feminism of Game of Thrones and on recent films about artificial intelligence—a subject, he reminds us, that was already of interest to Homer. This collection also brings together for the first time a number of the award-winning memoirist’s personal essays, including his “critic’s manifesto” and a touching reminiscence of his boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, who inspired him to study the Classics.

An American Jesuit combines spiritual writing, travel narrative, history, and humor to describe his time working with refugees in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

The adventures and attitudes shared by the American writers dubbed "The Lost Generation" are brought to life here by one of the group's most notable members. Feeling alienated in the America of the 1920s, Fitzgerald, Crane, Hemingway, Wilder, Dos Passos, Crowley, and many other writers "escaped" to Europe, some forever, some as temporary exiles. As Cowley details in this intimate, anecdotal portrait, in renouncing traditional life and literature, they expanded the boundaries of art.

This book presents a thematic analysis of various aspects of solitude, silence and loneliness, from the ancient world to the present day, explored thematically with consideration to the links between aloneness to other social and political issues. The themes include exile (expulsion from a community), ecstasy (getting 'out of oneself') and enstasy (being comfortable within oneself), to the Romantic idea of the artist as solitary. There is work on aloneness in and through nature, especially the importance of natural settings for positive experiences of solitude. A central theme is alienation and its emotions, with the idea of loneliness and the rejected self being a more modern experience. The book explores modernism and postmodernism as presenting new forms of solitude in the twentieth century, and how, more recently, there have been attempts to 'recover' the self, through therapeutic uses of the arts. All of these types and experiences of aloneness are described through the lenses of artistic, literary and musical forms of expression, as aloneness is not only explored and articulated through these art forms, but is in many ways created through these art forms.

Irving Stone's powerful and passionate biographical novel of Michelangelo. His time: the turbulent Renaissance, the years of poisoning princes, warring popes, the all-powerful Medici family, the fanatic monk Savonarola. His loves: the frail and lovely daughter of Lorenzo de Medici; the ardent mistress of Marco Aldovrandi; and his last love - his greatest love - the beautiful, unhappy Vittoria Colonna. His genius: a God-driven fury from which he wrested the greatest art the world has ever known. Michelangelo Buonarotti, creator of David, painter of the Sistine ceiling, architect of the dome of St Peter's, lives once more in the tempestuous, powerful pages of Irving Stone's marvellous book.

A scintillating collection of essays on language from one of literature's most supple minds In The Night Sky, her first work of essays, acclaimed poet Ann Lauterbach writes of the ways in which art and poetry are integral and necessary to human conversation. At the center of the book is a series of seven essays, by turns meditative and polemical, that articulate the interstices between Lauterbach's poetics and her experience. She advocates an active encounter with language, at once imaginative and practical, and argues for the importance of art to the well- being of a democratic society. Lauterbach's "nimble and glittering" (Booklist) writings bring us to a new understanding of the relationship between self-knowledge and cultural meaning, as well as demonstrating the ways in which contemporary philosophy and theory might be integrated with practical knowledge.