No Japanese writer was more obsessed with desire than Tanizaki Jun'ichiro (1886–1965). Over a career that spanned half a century, he explored, with both joyful fascination and ruthless insight, the dazzling varieties of sexuality, the complementary attractions of exoticism and nostalgia, the human yearning for mastery over others, and the tense relationship between fantasy and the exterior world. His fiction is filled with portrayals of desire in all its violence, irony, pathos, and comedy. In one of Tanizaki's novels, a young engineer fascinated with the West sets out to transform a Japanese bar girl into his very own version of Mary Pickford. He succeeds to such an extent that the girl, growing tired of his immutable Japaneseness, begins to take foreign lovers. Cuckolded and humiliated though his is, the engineer is unable to leave his fantasy-come-to-life and resigns himself to enslavement. In another novel, a Westernized Japanese finds himself gradually drawn to the past. Specifically, he is attracted to his father-in-law's companion, a young woman who has been trained and costumed to play the part of an old-fashioned mistress. Though this woman is no more a flesh-and-blood embodiment of tradition than a bunraku doll, the protagonist contemplates a life with someone like her, a life defined by the pursuit of abstract, dehumanized cultural ideals. Visions of Desire locates such novels in the shifting discourse on cultural identity and cultural aspiration that permeates Japanese life. Ito argues that Tanizaki's novels do not merely end in the reification and contemplation of cultural ideals but rather problematize the desire behind such ideals. He finds in the writer's fiction a subtle understanding of cultural aspiration as a process riddled with subversions, influenced by patterns of mediation, and circumscribed by the lonely efforts of individual subjectivity. He discovers in Tanizaki's fables about the male effort to transform women into cultural icons a clear awareness of the sexual and class hierarchies that make such transformation possible. Visions of Desire is the first book in English on a writer who is possibly modern Japan's greatest novelist. Ito has written for both the specialist and the general reader, setting his argument in a discussion both of Tanizaki's times and of the life of a writer who believed in living out the fantasies that fueled his fictions.

When the wicked have traveled a course of sin, and discover they have reason to fear the God;s judgement and wrath for their sins, they begin to wish there is no God to punish them, then by degrees they persuade themselves there is no God, and then they set themselves to study the arguments to support their opinion. This excellent book by John Bunyan covers the subject matter of the existence of heaven and hell as well as studies and dispells the arguments presented by sinners who argue there is no heaven and hell. Most do not know that Bunyan wrote some 60 books, and poetry too. And also almost a well-kept secret is that his doctrine was so biblically laced that many good men would call him too severe. He believed in, and taught, ALL the doctrines of grace, including double-predestination, or reprobation. Why then is he not smeared with the name of hyper-Calvinist like Goodwin, Gill, and others? I guess the same people ought to call Luther a hyper-Lutheran, for he believed and taught it, too. Why begin a review of Bunyan's writings with such a view of his doctrine? It is to show that a Pilgrim's Progress can come only from someone who believes and teaches ALL the counsel of God, without flinching, yea, with loving-kindness. Illegally, He sat in a jail cell over a river for 12 years with his Bible, Galatians by Luther, and another book or two. He had the choice of feeling miserable and murmuring, or of filling his time, thoughts, and energies with studying that Bible, and seeking a way to be of help to his more comfortable, but less dedicated, brothers and sisters. Listen, dear saints, you can't do any better than reading Bunyan. Like Gurnall, he covers everything here and there, and with a sweetness that can come only from God. What a shame that his large heart should be encased in such small print. But, like digging gold, it is worth the time and trouble to dig spiritual gold. Bunyan (1628-1688) rose from an humble beginning to being a preacher to a little house church, to 12 years in jail because he would not agree to quit preaching, to a huge church in London. He wrote 66 books, nearly all while in jail.

In its range and sophistication, Sublime Desire is a valuable addition to postmodernist studies as well as to studies of the historical romance novel.

The Roman Sodom -- City of destruction -- The end of the world -- Laws -- Histories -- Lust and morality in the (long) eighteenth century -- The discovery of Sodom, 1851

First in a new back-to- back series from the New York Times bestselling author Hailed as "a star in any genre,"(New York Times bestselling author J. R. Ward) Christina Dodd delivers an exciting new paranormal romance that introduces The Seven, a secret society created to combat evil in all its deadly forms...

In this addition to the award-winning Church and Postmodern Culture series, respected theologian Daniel Bell compares and contrasts capitalism and Christianity, showing how Christianity provides resources for faithfully navigating the postmodern global economy. Bell approaches capitalism and Christianity as alternative visions of humanity, God, and the good life. Considering faith and economics in terms of how desire is shaped, he casts the conflict as one between different disciplines of desire. He engages the work of two important postmodern philosophers, Deleuze and Foucault, to illuminate the nature of the postmodern world that the church currently inhabits. Bell then considers how the global economy deforms desire in a manner that distorts human relations with God and one another. In contrast, he presents Christianity and the tradition of the works of mercy as a way beyond capitalism and socialism, beyond philanthropy and welfare. Christianity heals desire, renewing human relations and enabling communion with God.

French composer Olivier Messiaen (1908 1992) is probably best known for his Quartet for the End of Time, premiered in a German prisoner-of-war camp in 1941. However, Messiaen was a remarkably complex, intelligent person with a sometimes tragic domestic life who composed a wide range of music. This book explores the enormous web of influences in the early part of Messiaen's long life. The first section of the book provides an intellectual biography of Messiaen's early life in order to make his (difficult) music more accessible to the general listener. The second section offers an analysis of and thematic commentaries on Messiaen's pivotal work for two pianos, Visions of Amen, composed in 1943. Schloesser's analysis includes timing indications corresponding to a downloadable performance of the work by accomplished pianists Stphane Lemelin and Hyesook Kim.