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Elements of Surprise: Our Mental Limits and the Satisfactions of Plot
by Vera TobinWhy do some surprises delight—the endings of Agatha Christie novels, films like The Sixth Sense, the flash awareness that Pip’s benefactor is not (and never was!) Miss Havisham? Writing at the intersection of cognitive science and narrative pleasure, Vera Tobin explains how our brains conspire with stories to produce those revelatory plots that define a “well-made surprise.” By tracing the prevalence of surprise endings in both literary fiction and popular literature and showing how they exploit our mental limits, Tobin upends two common beliefs. The first is cognitive science’s tendency to consider biases a form of moral weakness and failure. The second is certain critics’ presumption that surprise endings are mere shallow gimmicks. The latter is simply not true, and the former tells at best half the story. Tobin shows that building a good plot twist is a complex art that reflects a sophisticated understanding of the human mind. Reading classic, popular, and obscure literature alongside the latest research in cognitive science, Tobin argues that a good surprise works by taking advantage of our mental limits. Elements of Surprise describes how cognitive biases, mental shortcuts, and quirks of memory conspire with stories to produce wondrous illusions, and also provides a sophisticated how-to guide for writers. In Tobin’s hands, the interactions of plot and cognition reveal the interdependencies of surprise, sympathy, and sense-making. The result is a new appreciation of the pleasures of being had.
The Temptation of Despair: Tales Of The 1940s
by Werner SollorsIn Germany the end of World War II calls forth images of obliterated cities, hungry refugees, and ghostly monuments to Nazi crimes. Drawing on diaries, photographs, essays, reports, fiction and film, Werner Sollors makes visceral the sorrow and anger, guilt and pride, despondency and resilience of a defeated people--and the paradoxes of occupation.
World Philology
by Sheldon PollockPhilology—the discipline of making sense of texts—is enjoying a renaissance within academia. World Philology charts the evolution of philology across the many cultures and time periods in which it has been practiced and demonstrates how this branch of knowledge, like philosophy and mathematics, is essential to human understanding.
More than Real: A History Of The Imagination In South India
by David ShulmanFrom the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the major cultures of southern India underwent a revolution in sensibility reminiscent of what had occurred in Renaissance Italy. During this time, the imagination came to be recognized as the defining feature of human beings. More than Real draws our attention to a period in Indian history that signified major civilizational change and the emergence of a new, proto-modern vision. In general, India conceived of the imagination as a causative agent: things we perceive are real because we imagine them. David Shulman illuminates this distinctiveness and shows how it differed radically from Western notions of reality and models of the mind. Shulman's explication offers insightful points of comparison with ancient Greek, medieval Islamic, and early modern European theories of mind, and returns Indology to its rightful position of intellectual relevance in the humanities. At a time when contemporary ideologies and language wars threaten to segregate the study of pre-modern India into linguistic silos, Shulman demonstrates through his virtuoso readings of important literary works—works translated lyrically by the author from Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam—that Sanskrit and the classical languages of southern India have been intimately interwoven for centuries.
Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation In Text, Context, And Memory (The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures #12)
by Harold HolzerThe Emancipation Proclamation is responsible both for Lincoln’s being hailed as the Great Emancipator and for his being pilloried by those who consider his once-radical effort at emancipation insufficient. Holzer examines the impact of Lincoln’s announcement at the moment of its creation, and then as its meaning has changed over time.
Track Changes: A Literary History Of Word Processing
by Matthew G. KirschenbaumWriting in the digital age has been as messy as the inky rags in Gutenberg’s shop or the molten lead of a Linotype machine. Matthew Kirschenbaum examines how creative authorship came to coexist with the computer revolution. Who were the early adopters, and what made others anxious? Was word processing just a better typewriter, or something more?
Milosz: A Biography
by Andrzej FranaszekAndrzej Franaszek’s award-winning biography of Czeslaw Milosz—winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature—recounts the poet’s odyssey through WWI, the Bolshevik revolution, the Nazi invasion of Poland, and the USSR’s postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. This edition contains a new introduction by the translators, along with maps and a chronology.
The One King Lear
by Sir Brian VickersIn the 1980s influential scholars argued that Shakespeare revised King Lear in light of theatrical performance, resulting in two texts by the bard’s own hand. The two-text theory hardened into orthodoxy. Here Sir Brian Vickers makes the case that Shakespeare did not cut his original text. At stake is the way his greatest play is read and performed.
A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama And Muslim Origins In South Asia
by Manan Ahmed AsifManan Ahmed Asif shows that the Chachnama is a sophisticated work of political theory, embedded in both the Indic and Islamic ethos. His social and intellectual history of this text offers an important corrective to the divisions between Muslim and Hindu that so often define Pakistani and Indian politics today.
Slow Reading in a Hurried Age
by David MikicsReading, David Mikics says, should not be drudgery, and not mere information-gathering or escape either, but a way to live life at a higher pitch. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age is a practical guide for anyone who yearns for a more meaningful, satisfying reading experience, as well as sharper reading skills and improved concentration.
The Novel
by Michael SchmidtThe 700-year history of the novel in English defies straightforward telling. Encompassing a range of genres, it is geographically and culturally boundless and influenced by great novelists working in other languages. Michael Schmidt, choosing as his travel companions not critics or theorists but other novelists, does full justice to its complexity.
A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus And The Quest For Meaning
by Robert ZaretskyExploring themes that preoccupied Albert Camus--absurdity, silence, revolt, fidelity, and moderation--Robert Zaretsky portrays a moralist who refused to be fooled by the nobler names we assign to our actions, and who pushed himself, and those about him, to challenge the status quo. For Camus, rebellion against injustice is the human condition.
I Remain Yours: Common Lives in Civil War Letters
by Christopher HagerFor men in the Union and Confederate armies and their families at home, letter writing was the sole means to communicate. Taking pen to paper was a new and daunting task, but Christopher Hager shows how ordinary people made writing their own, and how they in turn transformed the culture of letters into a popular, democratic mode of communication.
Writing Was Everything (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures In The History Of American Civilization Ser.)
by Alfred KazinA deft blend of autobiography, history, and criticism, Writing Was Everything emerges as a reaffirmation of literature in an age of deconstruction and critical dogma. It stands as clear testimony to Kazin's belief that "literature is not theory but, at best, the value we can give to our experience, which in our century has been and remains beyond the imagination of mankind."
A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy And Failure Across The Pacific
by Hua HsuWho gets to speak for China? During the interwar years, when American condescension toward China yielded to fascination with all things Chinese, a circle of writers sparked an unprecedented conversation over U.S.-Chinese relations. Hua Hsu tells how they became ensnared in bitter rivalries over who could claim the title of leading China expert.
Thinking with Kant’s Critique of Judgment
by Michel ChaouliMichel Chaouli invites novice and expert alike to set out on the path of thinking, with help from Kant’s Critique of Judgment, about the force of aesthetic experience, the essence of art, and the relationship of beauty and meaning. Each chapter unfolds the significance of a key concept for Kant’s thought and our own ideas.
Does History Make Sense?: Hegel on the Historical Shapes of Justice
by Terry PinkardHegel’s philosophy of history—which most critics view as a theory of inevitable progress toward modern European civilization—is widely regarded as a failure today. Terry Pinkard’s spirited defense of the Hegelian view, based on a subtle understanding of human subjectivity, will play a central role in contemporary reevaluations of Hegel’s work.
Civic Longing: The Speculative Origins of U.S. Citizenship
by Carrie HydeNo Constitutional definition of citizenship existed until the 14th Amendment in 1868. Carrie Hyde looks at the period between the Revolution and the Civil War when the cultural and juridical meaning of citizenship was still up for grabs. She recovers numerous speculative traditions that made and remade citizenship’s meaning in this early period.
LatinX Voices: Hispanics in Media in the U.S
by Katie Coronado Erica KightLatinX Voices is the first undergraduate textbook that includes an overview of Hispanic/LatinX Media in the U.S. and gives readers an understanding of how media in the United States has transformed around this audience. Based on the authors’ professional and research experience, and teaching broadcast media courses in the classroom, this text covers the evolving industry and offers perspective on topics related to Latin-American areas of interest. With professional testimonials from those who have left their mark in print, radio, television, film and new media, this collection of chapters brings together expert voices in Hispanic/LatinX media from across the U.S., and explains the impact of this population on the media industry today.
Prewriting Your Screenplay: A Step-by-Step Guide to Generating Stories
by Michael TabbPrewriting Your Screenplay cements all the bricks of a story’s foundations together and forms a single, organic story-growing technique, starting with a blank slate. It shows writers how to design each element so that they perfectly interlock together like pieces of a puzzle, creating a stronger story foundation that does not leave gaps and holes for readers to find. This construction process is performed one piece at a time, one character at a time, building and incorporating each element into the whole. The book provides a clear-cut set of lessons that teaches how to construct that story base around concepts as individual as the writer’s personal opinions, helping to foster an individual writer’s voice. It also features end-of-chapter exercises that offer step-by-step guidance in applying each lesson, providing screenwriters with a concrete approach to building a strong foundation for a screenplay. This is the quintessential book for all writers taking their first steps towards developing a screenplay from nothing, getting them over that first monumental hump, resulting in a well-formulated story concept that is cohesive and professional.
How To Be Gay
by David M. HalperinA pioneer of LGBTQ studies dares to suggest that gayness is a way of being that gay men must learn from one another to become who they are. The genius of gay culture resides in some of its most despised stereotypes—aestheticism, snobbery, melodrama, glamour, caricatures of women, and obsession with mothers—and in the social meaning of style.
Complete Poems: Complete Poems
by John KeatsHere is the first reliable edition of Keats's complete poems designed expressly for general readers and students. Jack Stillinger provides helpful explanatory notes to the poems which give dates of composition, identify quotations and allusions, gloss names and words not included in the ordinary desk dictionary, and refer the reader to the best critical interpretations of the poems. The new introduction provides central facts about Keats's life and career, describes the themes of his best work, and speculates on the causes of his greatness.
Or Orwell: Writing and Democratic Socialism
by Alex WolochThere have been many studies of George Orwell, but nothing quite like this book by Alex Woloch—an exuberant, revisionary account of Orwell’s radical writing. Bearing down on the propulsive irony and formal restlessness intertwined with his plain-style, Woloch offers a new understanding of Orwell and a new way of thinking about writing and politics.
Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures
by Caleb EverettNumber concepts are a human invention developed and refined over millennia. They allow us to grasp quantities precisely: recent research shows that most specific quantities are not perceived in the absence of a number system. Numbers are not innate or universal; yet without them, the world as we know it would not exist.
Persophilia: Persian Culture on the Global Scene
by Hamid DabashiFrom antiquity to the Enlightenment, Persian culture has been integral to European history. Interest in all things Persian shaped not just Western views but the self-image of Iranians to the present day. Hamid Dabashi maps the changing geography of these connections, showing that traffic in ideas about Persia did not travel on a one-way street.