Often identified with its lyric poetry, Romanticism has come to be dismissed by historicists as an ineffectual idealism. By focusing on Romantic narrative, noted humanist Tilottama Rajan takes issue with this identification, as well as with the equation of narrative itself with the governmental apparatus of the Novel. Exploring the role of narrativity in the works of Romantic writers, Rajan also reflects on larger disciplinary issues such as the role of poetry versus prose in an emergent modernity and the place of Romanticism itself in a Victorianized nineteenth century. While engaging both genres, Romantic Narrative responds to the current critical shift from poetry to prose by concentrating, paradoxically, on a poetics of narrative in Romantic prose fiction. Rajan argues that poiesis, as a mode of thinking, is Romanticism’s legacy to an age of prose. She elucidates this thesis through careful readings of Shelley’s Alastor and his Gothic novels, Godwin’s Caleb Williams and St. Leon, Hays’ Memoirs of Emma Courtney, and Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman. Rajan, winner of the Keats-Shelley Association's Distinguished Lifetime Award and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is one of Romanticism’s leading scholars. Effective, articulate, and readable, Romantic Narrative will appeal to scholars in both nineteenth-century studies and narrative theory.

What makes a romance novel a romance? How do you write a kissing book?Writing a well-structured romance isn't the same as writing any other genre-something the popular novel and screenwriting guides don't address. The romance arc is made up of its own story beats, and the external plot and theme need to be braided to the romance arc-not the other way around.Told in conversational (and often irreverent) prose, Romancing the Beat can be read like you are sitting down to coffee with romance editor and author Gwen Hayes while she explains story structure. The way she does with her clients. Some of whom are regular inhabitants of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.Romancing the Beat is a recipe, not a rigid system. The beats don't care if you plot or outline before you write, or if you pants your way through the drafts and do a "beat check" when you're revising. Pantsers and plotters are both welcome. So sit down, grab a cuppa, and let's talk about kissing books.

Get the Knowledge Without the College! You are a writer. You dream of sharing your words with the world, and you're willing to put in the hard work to achieve success. You may have even considered earning your MFA, but for whatever reason--tuition costs, the time commitment, or other responsibilities--you've never been able to do it. Or maybe you've been looking for a self-guided approach so you don't have to go back to school. This book is for you. DIY MFA is the do-it-yourself alternative to a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. By combining the three main components of a traditional MFA--writing, reading, and community--it teaches you how to craft compelling stories, engage your readers, and publish your work. Inside you'll learn how to: • Set customized goals for writing and learning. • Generate ideas on demand. • Outline your book from beginning to end. • Breathe life into your characters. • Master point of view, voice, dialogue, and more. • Read with a "writer's eye" to emulate the techniques of others. • Network like a pro, get the most out of writing workshops, and submit your work successfully. Writing belongs to everyone--not only those who earn a degree. With DIY MFA, you can take charge of your writing, produce high-quality work, get published, and build a writing career.

“A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy. What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer. In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. “Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. “Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship” (The Toronto Star).

The third volume in this ground-breaking series, Persian Narrative Poetry in the Classical Era, 800-1500: Romantic and Didactic Genres, introduces masterpieces of Persian literature from these seven centuries to an international audience. In the process, it underlines the remarkable tenacity of their malleable tradition: the perennial dialogue and the interconnectedness which binds together a vast and varied literature composed of many threads, romantic and didactic, in many lands, from Anatolia and Iran to India and Central Asia. In its companion volume, Persian Lyric in the Classical Era, 800-1500, the readers of the series will have already met in passing all the mythical and historical figures who appear with far more aplomb on the stage here, with their lives narrated in detail by poets of different caliber from different perspectives. The first two chapters of this volume recount the literary history of the entire period, focusing on didactic and romantic narratives. The central chapters take a closer look at the towering figure of the poet Nezâmi Ganjavi. The final chapter takes the reader to a wider landscape tracing the footsteps of Alexander across the globe, offering insights to the cultural preoccupations refracted in so many versions past and present.