"Many fictional works have real, historical authors as characters. Great national literary icons like Virgil and Shakespeare have been fictionalized in novels, plays, poems, movies, and operas. This fashion might seem typically postmodern, the reverse side of the contention that the Author is Dead; but this collection of essays shows that the representation of historical authors as characters can boast of a considerable history, and may well constitute a genre in its own right. This volume brings together a collection of articles on appropriations of historical authors, written by experts in a wide range of major Western literatures."--BOOK JACKET.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature.

“The heart of Orr’s poetry, now as ever, is the enigmatic image . . . mystical, carnal, reflective, wry.”—San Francisco Review This book-length sequence of ecstatic, visionary lyrics recalls Rumi in its search for the beloved and its passionate belief in the healing qualities of art and beauty. Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved is an incantatory celebration of the “Book,” an imaginary and self-gathering anthology of all the lyrics—both poems and songs—ever written. Each poem highlights a distinct aspect of the human condition, and together the poems explore love, loss, restoration, the beauty of the world, the beauty of the beloved, and the mystery of poetry. The purpose and power of the Book is to help us live by reconnecting us to the world and to our emotional lives. I put the beloved In a wooden coffin. The fire ate his body; The flames devoured her. I put the beloved In a poem or song. Tucked it between Two pages of the Book. How bright the flames. All of me burning, All of me on fire And still whole. There is nothing quite like this book—an “active anthology” in the best sense—where individuals find the poems and songs that will sustain them. Or the poems find them. Gregory Orr is the author of eight books of poetry, four volumes of criticism, and a memoir. He has received numerous awards for his work, most recently the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Orr has taught at the University of Virginia since 1975 and was, for many years, the poetry editor of The Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives with his family in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Thomas Mann owes his place in world literature to the dissemination of his works through translation. Indeed, it was the monumental success of the original English translations that earned him the title of 'the greatest living man of letters' during his years in American exile (1938-52). This book provides the first systematic exploration of the English versions, illustrating the vicissitudes of literary translation through a principled discussion of a major author. The study illuminates the contexts in which the translations were produced before exploring the transformations Mann's work has undergone in the process of transfer. An exemplary analysis of selected textual dimensions demonstrates the multiplicity of factors which impinge upon literary translation, leading far beyond the traditional preoccupation with issues of equivalence. Thomas Mann in English thus fills a gap both in translation studies, where Thomas Mann serves as a constant but ill-defined point of reference, and in literary studies, which has focused increasingly on the author's wider reception.

Don’t miss Beatriz Williams’s latest, spellbinding novel – about a daring female pilot and a love story that would last a lifetime...

On April 1, 1933, he was an internationally famous and influential German professor, the director of the first institute in the world devoted entirely to mathematics, a trusted adviser of the education ministry, a successful author and editor, a man surrounded by a mathematical family of gifted students. Eight days later, he was dismissed from his position by the Nazis. Through friends, he obtained a modest position in the United States at a university with no mathematical reputation whatsoever.