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Literature, Theory, and Common Sense (New French Thought Series #5)
by Antoine CompagnonAn engaging introduction to contemporary debates in literary theoryIn the late twentieth century, the common sense approach to literature was deemed naïve. Roland Barthes proclaimed the death of the author, and Hillis Miller declared that all interpretation is theoretical. In many a literature department, graduate students spent far more time on Derrida and Foucault than on Shakespeare and Milton. Despite this, common sense approaches to literature—including the belief that literature represents reality and authorial intentions matter—have resisted theory with tenacity. As a result, argues Antoine Compagnon, theorists have gone to extremes, boxed themselves into paradoxes, and distanced others from their ideas. Eloquently assessing the accomplishments and failings of literary theory, Compagnon ultimately defends the methods and goals of a theoretical commitment tempered by the wisdom of common sense.The book is organized not by school of thought but around seven central questions: literariness, the author, the world, the reader, style, history, and value. What makes a work literature? Does fiction imitate reality? Is the reader present in the text? What constitutes style? Is the context in which a work is written important to its apprehension? Are literary values universal?As he examines how theory has wrestled these themes, Compagnon establishes not a simple middle-ground but a state of productive tension between high theory and common sense. The result is a book that will be met with both controversy and sighs of relief.
Emotionality: Heterosexual Love and Emotional Development in Popular Romance (Routledge Focus on Literature)
by Eirini ArvanitakiThis book focuses on the projections of romantic love and its progression in a selection of popular romance novels and identifies an innovation within the genre’s formula and structure. Taking into account Giddens’s notion of ‘confluent’ love, this book argues that two forms of love exist within these texts: romantic and confluent love. The analysis of these love variants suggests that a continuum emerges which signifies the complexity but also the formation and progressive nature of the protagonists’ love relationships. This continuum is divided into three stages: the pre-personal, semi-personal, and personal. The first phase connotes the introduction of the protagonists and describes the sexual attraction they experience for each other. The second phase refers to the initiation of the sexual interaction between the heroine and hero without any emotional involvement. The third and final phase begins when emotions such as jealousy, shame/guilt, anger, and self-sacrifice are awakened and acknowledged.
Emotionality: Heterosexual Love and Emotional Development in Popular Romance (Routledge Focus on Literature)
by Eirini ArvanitakiThis book focuses on the projections of romantic love and its progression in a selection of popular romance novels and identifies an innovation within the genre’s formula and structure. Taking into account Giddens’s notion of ‘confluent’ love, this book argues that two forms of love exist within these texts: romantic and confluent love. The analysis of these love variants suggests that a continuum emerges which signifies the complexity but also the formation and progressive nature of the protagonists’ love relationships. This continuum is divided into three stages: the pre-personal, semi-personal, and personal. The first phase connotes the introduction of the protagonists and describes the sexual attraction they experience for each other. The second phase refers to the initiation of the sexual interaction between the heroine and hero without any emotional involvement. The third and final phase begins when emotions such as jealousy, shame/guilt, anger, and self-sacrifice are awakened and acknowledged.
A Politics of Melancholia: From Plato to Arendt
by George Edmondson Klaus MladekWhy melancholia is a vital form of social critique and a catalyst for political renewalMelancholia is wrongly condemned as a condition of withdrawal and despair that alienates its sufferer from community. Countering that misconception, A Politics of Melancholia reclaims an understanding of melancholia not as an affliction in need of a remedy but as an affirmative stance toward decay and ruination in political life, and restores the melancholic figure—by turns inventive and destructive, outraged and inspired—to their rightful place as the poet of political thought.George Edmondson and Klaus Mladek identify pivotal moments of political melancholia in ancient and modern texts, offering new perspectives on the death of Socrates in Plato&’s dialogues, the fratricide in Hamlet, Woyzeck&’s killing of Marie in Georg Büchner&’s Woyzeck, the murder of Moses in Freud&’s thought, and the betrayal of the revolutionary idea that Hannah Arendt identifies in her critique of eighteenth-century revolutions. Melancholia emerges here as a disposition that is mournful but also jubilant, a mood of unbending disconsolation that remains faithful to a scene of downfall, to events that cannot be forgotten, and to things that cannot be governed.Recovering a tradition of thought that is both affirmative and hopeful, this eloquent book reveals how political melancholia embodies a shared condition of discontent that binds communities together and inspires change.
The Book Of Lists: The Original Compendium of Curious Information
by David Wallechinsky Amy WallaceThe first and best compendium of facts weirder than fiction, of intriguing information and must-talk-about trivia has spawned many imitators – but none as addictive or successful. For nearly three decades the editors researched curious facts, unusual statistics and the incredible stories behind them. The most entertaining and informative of these have been brought together in this edition.
Mog’s Amazing Birthday Caper: ABC
by null Judith KerrShare in fifty years of a really remarkable cat… Mog is everyone’s favourite family cat! Join her in this warm-hearted and funny alphabet adventure, when everything goes wrong at a birthday party… Now in full-colour ebook with optional read-along recording by Andrew Sachs. From the creator of The Tiger Who Came to Tea and Mog the Forgetful Cat comes a delightful family adventure about a really remarkable cat! On the day of Debbie’s birthday party, Mog sets off on an adventure through the alphabet, filled with dragons in the dark and the jaguar with a jug of jelly. M is for Mog, but also for the mad mouse monster! The perfect Mog adventure for learning the alphabet. Mog the Forgetful Cat was first published fifty years ago, and Mog has been delighting children all over the world with her adventures ever since. These books are the perfect gifts for boys, girls and families everywhere! [Note that audio content may be dependent on the functionality of your ebook reader. Download a sample, where possibility, to check.]
A History of American Literature 1900 - 1950 (Wiley-Blackwell Histories of American Literature)
by Christopher MacGowanA look at the first five decades of 20th century American literature, covering a wide range of literary works, figures, and influences A History of American Literature 1900-1950 is a current and well-balanced account of the main literary figures, connections, and ideas that characterized the first half of the twentieth century. In this readable, highly informative book, the author explores significant developments in American drama, fiction, and poetry, and discusses how the literature of the period influenced, and was influenced by, cultural trends in both the United States and abroad. Considering works produced during America’s rise to prominence on the world stage from both regional and international perspectives, MacGowan provides readers with keen insights into the literature of the period in relation to America’s transition from an agrarian nation to an industrial power, the racial and economic discrimination of Black and Native American populations, the greater financial and social independence of women, the economic boom of the 1920s, the Depression of the 1930s, the impact of world wars, massive immigration, political and ideological clashes, and more. Encompassing five decades of literary and cultural diversity in one volume, A History of American Literature 1900-1950: Covers American theater, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, magazines and literary publications, and popular media Discusses the ways writers dramatized the immense social, economic, cultural, and political changes in America throughout the first half of the twentieth century Explores themes and influences of Modernist poets, expatriate novelists, and literary publications founded by women and African-Americans Features the work of Black writers, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish AmericansA History of American Literature 1900-1950 is essential reading for all students in upper-level American literature courses as well as general readers looking to better understand the literary tradition of the United States.
A History of American Literature 1900 - 1950 (Wiley-Blackwell Histories of American Literature)
by Christopher MacGowanA look at the first five decades of 20th century American literature, covering a wide range of literary works, figures, and influences A History of American Literature 1900-1950 is a current and well-balanced account of the main literary figures, connections, and ideas that characterized the first half of the twentieth century. In this readable, highly informative book, the author explores significant developments in American drama, fiction, and poetry, and discusses how the literature of the period influenced, and was influenced by, cultural trends in both the United States and abroad. Considering works produced during America’s rise to prominence on the world stage from both regional and international perspectives, MacGowan provides readers with keen insights into the literature of the period in relation to America’s transition from an agrarian nation to an industrial power, the racial and economic discrimination of Black and Native American populations, the greater financial and social independence of women, the economic boom of the 1920s, the Depression of the 1930s, the impact of world wars, massive immigration, political and ideological clashes, and more. Encompassing five decades of literary and cultural diversity in one volume, A History of American Literature 1900-1950: Covers American theater, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, magazines and literary publications, and popular media Discusses the ways writers dramatized the immense social, economic, cultural, and political changes in America throughout the first half of the twentieth century Explores themes and influences of Modernist poets, expatriate novelists, and literary publications founded by women and African-Americans Features the work of Black writers, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish AmericansA History of American Literature 1900-1950 is essential reading for all students in upper-level American literature courses as well as general readers looking to better understand the literary tradition of the United States.
The Currency of Cultural Patrimony: The Spanish Golden Age (Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures #30)
by Robert BaylissThe Spanish Golden Age, a cultural narrative that has developed and over four centuries, remains a key element of how Spaniards articulate cultural identities, both within Spain and to the outside world. The Currency of Cultural Patrimony examines the development of this narrative by artists, intellectuals, historians, academics, and institutions. By defining the Spanish Golden Age as a diachronic problem, it examines several of Spain’s most canonical golden-age literary narratives (including Don Quixote, Fuenteovejuna, and Las mocedades del Cid) as texts whose institutionalization, mediation, and commercialization over the course of four hundred years inform their meaning both for contemporary Spaniards and for the field of Hispanic Studies around the world. Spain’s persistent deployment of this cultural patrimony as the canonical epicentre of a national literary tradition has stimulated diverse and often contradictory interpretations, the cumulative effect of which informs their reception by each new generation of Spaniards. This book’s analysis of how this patrimony is interpreted according to both tradition and current circumstances illuminates new angles from which scholars can approach some of Hispanism’s most persistent and vexing questions, including the growing divide between popular and academic understandings of the Spanish nation’s “classics.”
Christianity and the African Counter-Discourse in Achebe and Beti: Cultures in Dialogue, Contest and Conflict (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures)
by Ali YiğitChristianity and the African Counter-Discourse in Achebe and Beti: Cultures in Dialogue, Contest and Conflict intervenes, in light of African literary products, the history of Christianity in Africa in late 19th and early 20th centuries, goes beyond the existing clichés about the operations of the European Christian missionaries whether Protestant or Catholic in Africa, and opens alternative ways to read the chain of missionary-native African, and missionary-European colonists relationships. Christian missionaries did not come to Africa for: their own interests, the Christianization of Africa, European colonial projects, the interests of Africans, the establishment of European civilization in Africa, but came for all. Once, there was a dialogue between the Christian missionaries and pagan Africans which was in time replaced by contest for superiority, and finally by conflict. Accordingly, the countenance of the continent has changed forever.
Christianity and the African Counter-Discourse in Achebe and Beti: Cultures in Dialogue, Contest and Conflict (Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures)
by Ali YiğitChristianity and the African Counter-Discourse in Achebe and Beti: Cultures in Dialogue, Contest and Conflict intervenes, in light of African literary products, the history of Christianity in Africa in late 19th and early 20th centuries, goes beyond the existing clichés about the operations of the European Christian missionaries whether Protestant or Catholic in Africa, and opens alternative ways to read the chain of missionary-native African, and missionary-European colonists relationships. Christian missionaries did not come to Africa for: their own interests, the Christianization of Africa, European colonial projects, the interests of Africans, the establishment of European civilization in Africa, but came for all. Once, there was a dialogue between the Christian missionaries and pagan Africans which was in time replaced by contest for superiority, and finally by conflict. Accordingly, the countenance of the continent has changed forever.
Captain Amazing: Brilliant Adventures; Captain Amazing; Talk Show; Pomona (Modern Plays)
by Mr Alistair McDowallWhat do you do as Captain Amazing?Fight… baddies and things. Save people… make people go to bed when they're supposed to go to bed… Join the world's most unassuming superhero in Alistair McDowall's (Pomona, The Glow, X, all of it) critically-acclaimed masterpiece. From battling his arch-nemesis, to getting his daughter to school on time, follow Captain Amazing on his incredible adventures and discover how even the invincible aren't immune to tragedy.A hilarious and heart-breaking adventure which reminds us that one day, even the bravest of superheroes will need to hang up their cape… forever.This edition was published to coincide with the 10th anniversary production at London's Southwark Playhouse in May 2024.
Senses of Style: Poetry before Interpretation
by Jeff DolvenIn an age of interpretation, style eludes criticism. Yet it does so much tacit work: telling time, telling us apart, telling us who we are. What does style have to do with form, history, meaning, our moment’s favored categories? What do we miss when we look right through it? Senses of Style essays an answer. An experiment in criticism, crossing four hundred years and composed of nearly four hundred brief, aphoristic remarks, it is a book of theory steeped in examples, drawn from the works and lives of two men: Sir Thomas Wyatt, poet and diplomat in the court of Henry VIII, and his admirer Frank O’Hara, the midcentury American poet, curator, and boulevardier. Starting with puzzle of why Wyatt’s work spoke so powerfully to O’Hara across the centuries, Jeff Dolven ultimately explains what we talk about when we talk about style, whether in the sixteenth century, the twentieth, or the twenty-first.
The Novel Cure: An A to Z of Literary Remedies
by Ella Berthoud Susan ElderkinWhen read at the right moment, a novel can change your life. Bibliotherapists Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin know the power of a good book, and have been prescribing each other literary remedies for all life's aches and pains for decades. Together, they've compiled a medical handbook with a difference: a dictionary of literary cures for any malaise you can imagine. Whether it's struggling to find a good cup of tea (Douglas Adams, two sugars) or being in need of a good cry (Thomas Hardy, plus tissues), as well as cures for all kinds of reading ailments - from being a compulsive book buyer to a tendency to give up halfway through a novel - Ella and Susan have the tonic for all ailments, great or small. Written with authority, passion and wit, The Novel Cure is an enchanting reminder of the power and pleasure of forgetting your troubles in a good book.
Monkeys with Typewriters: How to Write Fiction and Unlock the Secret Power of Stories
by Scarlett ThomasStories are everywhere... Exploring the great plots from Plato to The Matrix and from Tolstoy to Toy Story, this is a book for anyone who wants to unlock any narrative and learn to create their own. With startling and original insights into how we construct stories, this is a creative writing book like no other. It will show you how to read and write better.
Gun Baby Gun: A Bloody Journey into the World of the Gun
by Iain OvertonSHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA NON-FICTION DAGGER In some places, it's easier to get a gun than a glass of water. In some places, you are allowed to carry concealed firearms into schools. In some places, there are more guns than people to shoot them. There are almost one billion guns across the globe today - more than ever before. Every minute of every day, someone somewhere is shot. Gun Baby Gun is a hard-hitting and urgent investigation into the gun's lifespan, into our hugely complex relationship with firearms and their undeniable, long-reaching and often hidden impact. Along the way, award-winning journalist Iain Overton unearths some stark truths about the everyday human cost of gun crime.
Word Monkey
by Christopher Fowler'A delight . . . a glorious, witty and life-affirming ragbag of autobiography, cultural commentary and hard-won wisdom.' ANDREW TAYLOR, author of The Shadows of London'Perceptive, wise and illuminating . . . an unmissable farewell.' Barry Forshaw, FINANCIAL TIMES'The most hilarious, life-affirming book you’ll read this year.' SAGA magazine'Wit and wisdom that make every page turn . . . what a fine talent the world has lost.' STARBURSTThis is the memoir Christopher Fowler always wanted to write about 'writing'.It's the story of how a young bookworm growing up in a house where there was nothing to read but knitting pamphlets and motorcycle manuals became a writer - a 'word monkey' - and pursued a sort of career in popular fiction. And it's a book full of brilliant insights into the pleasures and pitfalls of his profession, dos and don'ts for would-be writers, and astute observations on favourite (and not-so-favourite) novelists.But woven into this hugely entertaining and inspiring reflection on a literary life is an altogether darker thread. In Spring 2020, just as the world went into lockdown, Chris was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And yet there is nothing of the misery memoir about Word Monkey. Past and present intermingle as, in prose as light as air, he relates with wry humour and remarkable honesty what he knows will be the final chapter in his story.Deeply moving, insightful and surprisingly funny, this is Christopher Fowler's life-affirming account of coming to terms with his own mortality.'A remarkable book by a remarkable writer: amazingly entertaining and informative and also, for obvious reasons, one of the most moving.' SIMON MASON, author of the DI Wilkins Mysteries'Wonderful . . . there is no bitterness here, but a hearty celebration of how art defines a life, with dark humour on the right occasions and the deliberate aim to leave a positive message . . . his enthusiasm is infectious and sobering when you are aware that he was dying as he wrote these pages.' Maxim Jacubowski, CRIME TIME
A Multidisciplinary Exploration into Flow in Writing (Routledge Research in Writing Studies)
by Deborah F. Rossen-Knill Katherine L. Schaefer Matthew W. Bayne Whitney Gegg-Harrison Dev Crasta Alessandra DiMauroOffering a multidisciplinary exploration of “flow” and the often-nebulous ways it is conceptualized and operationalized in writing pedagogy, this book addresses a critical gap in writing studies.Bringing together practice-based and scholarly perceptions, it outlines the key features and definitions of flow, and identifies pedagogical approaches and opportunities for classroom instruction. Incorporating perspectives from disciplines including classical rhetoric, composition studies, cognitive science, and linguistics, this book provides a diverse overview of the literature on flow in writing pedagogy. It includes two instructional voice-based and rhetorical grammar-based activities that outline how to recognize and improve flow in writing. In doing so, the book also provides clear examples of how to create an inclusive writing pedagogy that incorporates sensory and analytical perspectives to help readers and writers experience flow and meet their writing goals.As an exploration of flow instruction as it currently stands and might stand in the future, this book will be of interest to students and instructors in the field of academic, professional and creative writing studies.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.
Space-Time: Studies in the Symbolic (Re-)appropriation of Public Space (Routledge Studies in Sociolinguistics)
by Isabelle Buchstaller, Małgorzata Fabiszak, and Melody Ann RossThis collection spotlights the diachronic dimensions of the linguistic landscape, the importance of exploring temporal dissonances in historical events in order to better understand semiotic, political, and social transformations across different communities over the last century.The volume seeks to expand the current borders of linguistic landscape (LL) research by situating the analysis of signs in the LL within their time–space organization, which has been understudied in existing scholarship. The book, featuring chapters from established and emerging scholars, argues that a focus on the historicity of the city text can reveal unique insights into the role of semiotic processes as precursors and support mechanisms for political and social changes. The collection is structured around different temporal clusters and geographic contexts across the globe where shorter and longer waves of politically driven resemioticization can be most sharply observed – post-colonial communities; post-communist societies; and recent and current sociopolitical upheavals. Taken together, the volume proposes a kaleidoscope view of the complex temporalities that underpin multimodal discourses in contested public spaces, offering new directions for LL research.This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, semiotics, visual anthropology, and political science.The Introduction and Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BYNC-ND) 4.0 license.
The Pedagogy of Watching Shakespeare (Elements in Shakespeare and Pedagogy)
by null Bethan Marshall null Myfanwy Edwards null Charlotte DixieThe pedagogy of acting out Shakespeare has been extensive. Less work has been done on how students learn through spectatorship. This element will consider all within the current context of Shakespeare teaching in schools. Using grounded research, it will include work undertaken on a schools National Theatre production of Macbeth, as well as classroom-based, action research, using a variety of digital performances of Shakespeare plays. Both find means of extending student knowledge in unexpected ways through encountering interpretations of Shakespeare that the students had not considered. In reflecting on the practice of watching Shakespeare in an educational context- both at the theatre and in the classroom- this Element hopes to offer suggestions for how teachers might re-think the ways in which they present Shakespeare performed to their students particularly as a powerful way of building personal and critical responses to the plays.
The Festival of India: Development and Diplomacy at the End of the Cold War (Elements in Theatre, Performance and the Political)
by null Rashna Darius NicholsonAn in-depth study of the Festival of India (1985–1986) in the United States, one of the biggest events ever mounted to promote goodwill between two countries. Comprising more than seven hundred programs of music, dance, drama, film shows, art exhibitions, and workshops sponsored by over two hundred cultural institutions across over a hundred cities, the festival constituted a prismatic event that refracted the complex forces at play on the global stage during the 1980s. The Element delineates how this multi-sited spectacle of unprecedented size and near unfathomable political, economic, and cultural influence impacted theatre and performance studies. Simultaneously, it traces how two complex historical shifts were communicated to the global public at the end of the Cold War: India's desire to transition from planned Nehruvian socialism to laissez faire capitalism and the efflorescence of the model of 'cultural development' that centred the arts in development.
Studies of Literature from Marginalized Nations in Modern China, with a Focus on Eastern European Literature
by Binghui SongThis book presents the first systematic study of the 100-year history of translation, research, reception, and influence of Central and Eastern European literature in China from the late Qing Dynasty to the end of the twentieth century. This study of Eastern European literature from the perspective of Sino-foreign literary relations is based on extensive research into the translation and reception of Central and Eastern European writers such as Milan Kundera, Sándor Petőfi, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Julius Fucik, and Bertolt Brecht. Since the late nineteenth century, the major Chinese writers have paid special attention to the literature of the marginalized Eastern European nations when they have to translate from translations since few of them understand Eastern European languages. The book seeks to identify what attracted the founders of new Chinese literature to Eastern European literature and to define its unique significance for the construction of modern Chinese literature.
Tamil Prose after Bharathi
by VallikannanBefore Bharathi, Tamil writers considered writing in a way readers cannot understand as a mark of punditry. It was almost a tradition to employ a difficult style to explain even a simple matter. After showing the readers how involuted and difficult the styles of writers before Bharathi were, Vallikannan discusses the innovative features of Bharathi and the impact they made on his successors. He discusses the individualistic features of several great writers of Tamil fiction and their contribution to the development of Tamil as a language reflecting modernity and capable of coping with the knowledge explosion witnessed up to the present day.The book discusses the works of the stalwarts of Tamil fiction: Kalki, Puthumaipithan, Ku. Pa. Rajagopalan, La. Sa. Ra., Mouni, Jayakanthan, Sujatha and many more including a few Sri Lankan Tamil writers. Apart from these, Vallikannan has made an incisive study of the oratorical style of C. N. Annadurai, one of the most accomplished statesmen of Tamil Nadu.This book will help students, researchers, academics and Tamil literature enthusiasts get a good understanding of the Tamil writers discussed and the development of Tamil prose through the major part of the twentieth century.
On the Gods and the World: Orpheus and the Presocratics in the Derveni Papyrus
by Vojt?ch Hladk?The Derveni papyrus is a multi-layered and intricate philosophical and religious treatise written in Greek, probably just before 400 BCE. Since its discovery in 1962, the papyrus has attracted the attention of scholars in several areas of Classical studies, mostly ancient philosophy and religion, but also literary studies. The anonymous author of the text quotes a previously unknown Orphic poem and comments on it using philosophical motifs and concepts borrowed from various Presocratic thinkers but especially Heraclitus and the Anaxagoreans. The book presents a new interpretation of various aspects of this complex text: situating the treatise within the tradition of allegorical interpretation; providing an interpretation of the opening columns, which describe a peculiar ritual and contain some Heraclitean material, including, as the study argues, some previously unknown fragments; reconstructing the contents of the Orphic poem upon which the Derveni author comments; examining various allegorical devices employed by the Derveni author in his explanation of the Orphic poem, following his commentary in detail; and finally, discussing the likely intellectual background in which the Derveni treatise originated. In general, the study argues that rather than being the work of a philosophising Orphic initiate, the Derveni treatise is a philosophical text whose aim was to explain a nonstandard religious poem. The commentary explains the Orphic poem from a perspective influenced by discussions among the followers of philosophy of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, and employs reflections on the use and function of language found in the writings of some contemporary thinkers. Based on an analysis of sources upon which the Derveni papyrus is based, it is concluded that its author was probably active in Athens in late fifth century BCE and may have been a person close to Socrates' teacher Archelaus.
On the Gods and the World: Orpheus and the Presocratics in the Derveni Papyrus
by Vojt?ch Hladk?The Derveni papyrus is a multi-layered and intricate philosophical and religious treatise written in Greek, probably just before 400 BCE. Since its discovery in 1962, the papyrus has attracted the attention of scholars in several areas of Classical studies, mostly ancient philosophy and religion, but also literary studies. The anonymous author of the text quotes a previously unknown Orphic poem and comments on it using philosophical motifs and concepts borrowed from various Presocratic thinkers but especially Heraclitus and the Anaxagoreans. The book presents a new interpretation of various aspects of this complex text: situating the treatise within the tradition of allegorical interpretation; providing an interpretation of the opening columns, which describe a peculiar ritual and contain some Heraclitean material, including, as the study argues, some previously unknown fragments; reconstructing the contents of the Orphic poem upon which the Derveni author comments; examining various allegorical devices employed by the Derveni author in his explanation of the Orphic poem, following his commentary in detail; and finally, discussing the likely intellectual background in which the Derveni treatise originated. In general, the study argues that rather than being the work of a philosophising Orphic initiate, the Derveni treatise is a philosophical text whose aim was to explain a nonstandard religious poem. The commentary explains the Orphic poem from a perspective influenced by discussions among the followers of philosophy of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, and employs reflections on the use and function of language found in the writings of some contemporary thinkers. Based on an analysis of sources upon which the Derveni papyrus is based, it is concluded that its author was probably active in Athens in late fifth century BCE and may have been a person close to Socrates' teacher Archelaus.