One of the most important emerging novelists today, Khaled Hosseini has enjoyed critical success and popular accolades. His first book, The Kite Runner, was voted Reading Group Book of the Year in 2006 and 2007 and was made into a major motion picture. His second book, A Thousand Splendid Suns, seems destined to follow the same path.
Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism
In recent years, the idea of multiculturalism has become a powerful--and controversial--influence in a variety of social and cultural territories. In the academic world it has profoundly influenced curriculum and scholarship in the humanities, particularly in traditionally Eurocentric disciplines such as comparative literature.
Pliny's Praise: The Panegyricus in the Roman World
Pliny's Panegyricus (AD 100) survives as a unique example of senatorial rhetoric from the early Roman Empire. It offers an eyewitness account of the last years of Domitian's principate, the reign of Nerva and Trajan's early years, and it communicates a detailed senatorial view on the behaviour expected of an emperor. It is an important document in the development of the ideals of imperial leadership, but it also contributes greatly to our understanding of imperial political culture more generally.
Critical Survey of Poetry profiles the lives, achievements, and important works of major poets. Originally published in 1983 and revised in 1993, the latest edition adds 146 poets, covering 843 poets in total. The set includes two volumes of Topical Essays, covering regions, themes, movements, and criticism. All original essays were revised, in many cases by the original contributor. Also, essays have been arranged in several subsets, so that libraries can choose the complete set, or only the titles in which they are interested.
Shakespeare and Cognition - Aristotle's Legacy and Shakespearean Drama: Webbing the Invisible
Shakespeare and Cognition examines the essential relationship between vision, knowledge, and memory in Renaissance models of cognition as seen in Shakespeare's plays. Drawing on both Aristotle's Metaphysics and contemporary cognitive literary theory, Arthur F. Kinney explores five key objects/images in Shakespeare's plays -- crowns, bells, rings, graves, and ghosts -- that are not actually seen (or, in the case of the latter, not meant to be seen), but are central to the imaginations of both the playwright and the playgoers.
