It's near the end of the world, and the Church intelligentsia concurs. The darkness in man's soul is terrifying the whole of Christendom where prophets and theologians have lost control. As the world inexorably approaches the year 1500, anxieties deepen at a staggering pace. Who will save the world? If today someone were to shout from the rooftops imploring us to love our Mother Earth before it's too late, would we listen? Prophets come in many forms and often speak our language. Their words are comprehensible, but their meaning is not. Prophecy is serious business. Often the prophet is taken for the fool, the eccentric saint, or the madman who's half-blind and sees things we do not. Or could it be the old lady who walks her dog ten times a day apparently mumbling words to deaf ears while her Parkinsonian hand keeps trembling to the beat of a truth no one wants to hear. Prophecy is dangerous. If we listen, then we too might be crazy like the fool, the saint, the half-blind man, and the old lady with her dog. Prophecy is not for me. I'll just sit in my poop and play it safe.

'Thus she was decapitated, and this was the end to which she was brought by her unbridled lusts.' For over two centuries after Boccaccio's groundbreaking Decameron, the Italian novella exercised a crucial influence over European prose fiction. With thirty-nine stories by nineteen authors, many translated for the first time, this anthology presents tales from the whole genre and period. Here we meet a rich cast of humble peasants and shrewd craftsmen, frustrated wives, libidinous friars, ill-fated lovers, and vengeful nobles. These works had a considerable impact in English, and the selection includes tales that have provided sources for Chaucer, Shakespeare, Webster, Marston, Dryden, Byron and Keats. The typical novella is situated in a precise time and place and features people who either existed historically or are presumed to have done so. The subject-matter, whether ribald or sentimental, comic or tragic, often reflects the social and economic conditions of its age and thus the novella has been seen as a crucial stage in the development of fictional realism and the emergence of the novel

In this revised and greatly expanded edition of theCompanion, 80 scholars come together to offer an originaland far-reaching assessment of English Renaissance literature andculture. A new edition of the best-selling Companion to EnglishRenaissance Literature, revised and updated, with 22 newessays and 19 new illustrations Contributions from some 80 scholars including Judith H.Anderson, Patrick Collinson, Alison Findlay, Germaine Greer,Malcolm Jones, Arthur Kinney, James Knowles, Arthur Marotti, RobertMiola and Greg Walker Unrivalled in scope and its exploration of unfamiliar literaryand cultural territories the Companion offers new readingsof both ‘literary’ and ‘non-literary’texts Features essays discussing material culture, sectarian writing,the history of the body, theatre both in and outside theplayhouses, law, gardens, and ecology in early modern England Orientates the beginning student, while providing advancedstudents and faculty with new directions for theirresearch All of the essays from the first edition, along with therecommendations for further reading, have been reworked orupdated

What is it about ruins that are so alluring, so puzzling, that they can hold some of us in endless wonder over the half-erased story they tell? In this elegant book, Robert Harbison explores the captivating hold these remains and broken pieces—from architecture, art, and literature—have on us. Why are we, he asks, so suspicious of things that are too smooth, too continuous? What makes us feel, when we look upon a fragment, that its very incompletion has a kind of meaning in itself? Is it that our experience on earth is inherently discontinuous, or that we are simply unable to believe in anything whole? Harbison guides us through ruins and fragments, both ancient and modern, visual and textual, showing us how they are crucial to understanding our current mindset and how we arrived here. First looking at ancient fragments, he examines the ways we have recovered, restored, and exhibited them as artworks. Then he moves on to modernist architecture and the ways that it seeks a fragmentary form, examining modern projects that have been designed into existing ruins, such as the Castelvecchio in Verona, Italy and the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin. From there he explores literature and the works of T. S. Eliot, Montaigne, Coleridge, Joyce, and Sterne, and how they have used fragments as the foundation for creating new work. Likewise he examines the visual arts, from Schwitters’ collages to Ruskin’s drawings, as well as cinematic works from Sergei Eisenstein to Julien Temple, never shying from more deliberate creators of ruin, from Gordon Matta-Clark to countless graffiti artists. From ancient to modern times and across every imaginable form of art, Harbison takes a poetic look at how ruins have offered us a way of understanding history and how they have enabled us to create the new.

Altmann and de Vos are back with more great ideas for exploring contemporary reworkings of classic folk and fairy tales that appeal to teen readers. If you loved New Tales for Old (Libraries Unlimited, 1999), this new work will be sure to please. Following the same format, each story includes tale type numbers, motifs, and lists of reworkings arranged by genre, and suggestions for classroom extensions. INSIDE: Beauty and the Beast, Jack and the Beanstalk, Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and five fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen.

"This work examines the theological relationship between creation and creativity in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It does so by bringing together a synthesis of various disciplines and perspectives to the creativity of J.R.R. Tolkien. Hart and Khovacs provide a fresh reading of these important themes in Tolkien, and the result captures the multi-faceted nature of Tolkien's own vivid theology and literary imagination." --Amazon.com.

Although readers and filmgoers are strongly familiar with Disney's sanitized child-centric fairy tales, they are quick to catch on to reworkings of classic tales into a contemporary context. The rise is such retellings seems to indicate that readers are hungry for a new narrative, one that hearkens back to the old yet moves the storyline forward to reflect conditions of the modern world. No mere escapist fantasies, the reimagined fairy tales of the late 20th and early 21st centuries reflect social, political and cultural truths. Sixteen essays consider fairy tales recreated through short stories, novels, poetry, and the graphic novel from both best-selling and lesser-known writers, applying a variety of perspectives, including postmodernism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, queer theory and gender studies. Along with the classic fairy tales, fiction from writers such as Neil Gaiman (Stardust) and Gregory Macquire (Wicked) is covered.