|
|
|
|  | The Libertine Reader by Michel Feher
Irresistibly charming or shamelessly deceitful, remarkably persuasive or uselessly verbose, everything one loves to hate -- or hates to love -- about French lovers and their self-styled reputation can be traced to eighteenth-century libertine novels. Obsessed with strategies of seduction, speculating endlessly about the motives and goals of lovers, the idle aristocrats who populate these novels are exclusively preoccupied with their erotic life. Deprived of other battlefields to fulfill their thirst for glory, libertine noblemen seek to conquer the women of their class without falling into the trap of love, while their female prey attempt to enjoy the pleasures of love without sacrificing their honor. Yet, despite the licentious mores of the declining Old Regime, men and women are still expected to pay lip service to an austere code of morals. Since they are constantly asked to denounce their own practices, their erotic war games are governed by a double constraint: whatever they feel or intend, the heroes of libertine literature can neither say what they mean nor mean what they say. The Libertine Reader includes all the varieties of libertine strategies: from the successful cunning of Mme de T___ in Vivant Denon`s No Tomorrow to the ill-fated genius of Mme de Merteuil in Laclos`s Dangerous Liaisons; from the laborious sentimental education of Meilcour in Crebillon fils`s The Wayward Head and Heart to the hazardous master plan of the French ambassador in Prevost`s The Story of a Modern Greek Woman. The discrepancies between the characters` words and their true intentions -- the libertine double entendre -- are exposed through the speaking vaginas in Diderot`s The Indiscreet Jewelsand the wandering soul of Amanzei in Crebillon fils`s The Sofa, while the contrasts between natural and civilized -- or degenerate -- erotics are the subjects of both Diderot`s Supplement to Bougainville`s Voyage and Laclos`s On the Education of Women. Finally, Sade`s Florville and Courva AUTHOR: Michel Feher
PUBLISHER: Zone Books
FORMAT: Paperback
CATEGORY: Fiction 
|
 | Angel at Troublesome Creek by Mignon Franklin Ballard
Description not available.When her Aunt Caroline dies under mysterious circumstances, Mary George Murphy can only discover the truth with the help of her Guardian Angel, Augusta Goodnight, who last visited Earth during World War II and still loves Swing music. Reprint. AUTHOR: Mignon Franklin Ballard
PUBLISHER: Berkley Publishing Group
FORMAT: Paperback
CATEGORY: Fiction
|
 | Virginia Woolf's London by Jean Moorcroft Wilson
An overview of Virginia Woolf's beloved London from her own perspective, including her favorite walks, the routes taken through London by her characters, a list of the places she lived (with domestic details), and a sketch of various London neighborhoods and how they have changed over the years. Illustrated with line drawings. AUTHOR: Jean Moorcroft Wilson
PUBLISHER: I. B.Tauris & Company, Limited
FORMAT: Paperback
CATEGORY: Fiction
|
 | Complete Poems of Keats by John Keats
Keats, with presentiments of his early death, worked with single-minded dedication once he began writing poetry at the age of 18. He began a rigorous training period during which he studied the great poets who preceded him, and in his November 1817 poem, Sleep and Poetry , he wrote: O for ten years, that I may overwhelm/Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed/That my own soul has to itself decreed. Alas, he was to have only three years before he became ill with the tuberculosis that would finally kill him at 25. Keats is celebrated for his sensual imagery, his intense identification with the things he wrote about, and the beauty of his language, which has often been compared to Shakespeare's. AUTHOR: John Keats
PUBLISHER: Random House, Incorporated
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Fiction
|
 | The Face at the Window by Linda Saport, Regina Hanson
A young girl names Dora learns to understand, and develop compassion for, her mentally ill neighbor. Pastel drawings illustrate this story, which is set in Jamaica. AUTHOR: Linda Saport, Regina Hanson
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin Company Trade & Reference Division
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Fiction
|
 | Selected Poems of Walt Whitman by Harold Bloom, Walt Whitman
Whitman`s poetry, with its energetic style, looseness of form, and breadth of subject matter, revolutionized American writing. His declared intention was to create poetry that was distinctively American, to give something to our literature that will be our own... --a democratic vision that encompassed and celebrated all races and classes. Whitman`s technique often involved making lists of the wonders and varieties of the human experience: contraltos, carpenters, duck-shooters, lunatics, machinists, immigrants, reformers, squaws, deckhands, millgirls, opium eaters, the President, fishermen, patriarchs, old folks--all these categories of people, plus hundreds more, appear in his work. He referred to himself in a poem as Walt Whitman, an American.../Disorderly, fleshly and sensual, and he prophesied his own popularity when he wrote, Missing me in one place search another,/I stop somewhere waiting for you. AUTHOR: Harold Bloom, Walt Whitman
PUBLISHER: St. Martin's Press, LLC
FORMAT: Hardcover
CATEGORY: Fiction
|
|
|
