Bøger udgivet af Academica Press

This book discusses the eight novels of the American expatriate author W. B. Trites. Although Trites was highly praised by such contemporaries as H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, W. B. Maxwell, Max Beerbohm, L. P. Hartley, and Frank Harris, among others, he remains curiously unknown today. His spare style, which predated Hemingway's by several decades, did not impress publishers accustomed to more expansive prose. Worse still, his prospects suffered from the forbidden social subjects that he dared to explore in a less open era, when publishers shied away from controversial topics. Richard Rex's masterful discussion of Trites's remarkable novels includes contemporary reviews, comments on the author's themes, his negotiations with publishers, and biographical details heretofore unknown.

Courtly love and feminism are strange bedfellows, the one a controversial literary concept, and the other a continuing crusade. Both can be taken seriously or ridiculed. In this incisive book, Antonia Southern tries to do both with both. Courtly Love focuses a feminist lens on fourteen authors, some well-known and some less so. They aimed variously to entertain, amuse, instruct, make money, or please themselves. Marie de France is the supreme example of the last category. Sir Thomas Malory wrote in prison and needed to pass the time. Christine de Pizan wrote to make a living for herself and her family. The Knight of La Tour-Landry wrote advice for his own daughters. Sir Philip Sidney wrote for his sister and her friends. Chrétien de Troyes and Andrew Capellanus had patrons to please, and so sometimes did Geoffrey Chaucer. A historian unrepentantly trespassing in the verdant fields of English literature, Southern rejects the concept of "the Death of the Author" and the divorce of authors from their writing and seeks to understand them on their own terms.

The classics used to be the seminal texts of Western civilization and education. From Homer down through the Greek poets and philosophers, including the Roman poets and early Christian writers, the classics were indispensable in shaping the hearts, minds, and souls of Westerners toward the Good, True, and Beautiful. Today, however, the classics are under attack as nothing but a relic of racism, misogyny, and sexism that have no place in the modern world. Far from irrelevant, the classics are deeply pertinent to the struggles of modern society and the human soul. In this collection of essays, Paul Krause offers a guided tour through the classics and highlights the wisdom, truth, and beauty that these great works embody. Recovering the hermeneutic of love, rather than promoting the politicization of literature, is needed in restoring the great works of Western literature to their important place in Western culture. From Homer and Aeschylus to Herodotus and Plato, from Virgil and Catullus to Ovid and Saint Augustine, Finding Arcadia reveals the wisdom that our ancestors gained from the books rightfully called the classics.

This is the first major work to present a political, legal, theological, philosophical, and missiological view - validated by ancient Jewish Rabbinical hermeneutical strategies - of the current maelstrom affecting Western society. The author employs a conservative Judeo-Christian and political standpoint in evaluating the challenge to accepted values, morals, and precepts underpinning Western civilization. The dramatic story of the primordial origins of Identity ideologies and their devastating effect, many centuries later, upon contemporary culture is revealed. Coercive Identity Politics have revolutionized the established political and legal arrangement and the essential freedoms inherent in the West's classical liberal democratic political order. The existential contest between the Judeo-Christian faith and secular humanist, new age neo-pagan ideologies, is a struggle for identity - a struggle for the very soul of humanity. This conflict originated at the time of creation, in the Garden of Eden, to be resolved only in the eschatological age. In the interim, society reels from the onslaught on its traditional way of life. Yet there is hope, as this Book explains.

One of the challenges Nigeria has faced since independence in 1960 has been its human rights record. Under military rule, the problem was attributed to the undemocratic nature of military regimes. When the military handed over power to civilians after an election in 1999, it was expected that democratic governance would lead to improved respect for human rights. But human rights violations persisted. This book examines the state of human rights in Nigeria, the different sources, reasons, and dimensions of human rights violations during the Fourth Republic for a better understanding of Africa in the 21st century.

Ernest Hemingway pioneered the short story genre by prioritizing economy of prose. He also wrote the shortest short story: his famous six-word "For Sale: Baby Shoes Never Worn!" The whole story embodies these words, which are semantically meaningful. Influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's "single-effect" theory, each story drives the reader to concentrate on a substantial controlling idea that directs the story from beginning to end. A writer of the "Lost Generation," Hemingway went to Europe during World War I to master writing. He also served at the front. He used his experiences then, before, and after to craft a highly original approach to the short story, involving thematic issues around marriage, war, friendship, bullfighting, love, nature, and enemies. He also explored themes of alienation, isolation, existential philosophy, meaninglessness, nihilism, and aimlessness. Hemingway's wide perspective invites an intense subjectivity, uniting with readers who become an active part of the interpretation. Zennure Köseman's new book offers a deft exploration of this craft.

The Wild, Wild East recounts the adventures of late-onset Texan and international businessman Tom Meurer over a span of 55 years, from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. As a freshly commissioned Air Force lieutenant, Tom experienced a build-up to war. But it was only after billionaire H. Ross Perot wooed him into the seemingly starchy world of software engineering that Meurer traveled to wartime Vietnam and Laos, searching for evidence of 1,600 missing U.S. prisoners of war. He found himself negotiating with drug-runners, brothel owners, gold smugglers, and dangerously high-ranking diplomats. What started as a privately funded international spy-ring, ended with a privately funded tickertape parade and star-studded weekend reception in San Francisco. Years later, he returned to Vietnam, looking for oil instead of prisoners.Between trips to Southeast Asia, Meurer began working with the Nixon White House as a presidential advance man. Beyond the obvious challenges of anti-war and civil rights protests, Meurer recounts the perils of camera angles, college football fans, bathroom visits, exotic helicopter rides, and the devastating 1970 Peruvian earthquake, which killed more than 80,000 people.Meurer tells of his longtime friendship and business career with Ray Hunt, of Hunt Oil Company, and the game-changing discovery of oil in Yemen - a country "storming out of the 14th century." Ever the fish-out-of-water, he describes his travels, negotiations, and business developments in "Red China" as it began to turn capitalist in 1979. Through his role in Chinese oil exploration, private equity, personal friendships, and the nascent beef industry, Meurer witnessed the People's Republic of China's meteoric rise over the following 35 years. Along the way, we find him pranking communist border guards, breaking out of curfew-imposed war zone hotels and into U.S. embassies, nearly crash landing in Siberia, arrested for jogging in Albania, vacationing with the family in Karl-Marx-Stadt, and ingesting unspeakably exotic foods. He watched leaders, luminaries, lending practices, and landscapes change and change again (and then again), while collecting hotel soap, memberships to airline VIP lounges, and frequent flyer miles. He often found himself in rooms with presidents, prime ministers, sheikhs, and village chiefs as history was happening.In true Forest Gumpian fashion, The Wild, Wild East is a study in best-case scenario of wit + energized wonder + proximity to wealth. Through the opportunities presented by Perot and Hunt, Dallas billionaires who were employers but became dear family friends, Meurer found himself living his best life, one of worldwide adventure while simply having fun, making an honest living, and helping the truest of people and best of friends.These are stories of one man's life - the career, adventures, and impressive people, friends, axioms, discoveries, events, cultures, and institutions he encountered along the way.

Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam discusses theoretical ideas, interpretations, and paleontological evidence to narrate the origin and evolutionary story of Sapiens through the transitional stages of archaic human species involved in the evolutionary pilgrimage, from the great apes and to modern humans. Author Subir Ranjan Kundu investigates the DNA footprints of primates - great apes, archaic humans, and anatomically modern human beings - to stretch out the missing links between evolutionary milestones to define and redefine the progress of life.The origin and evolution of Humans have always remained a source of debate between the creationists and evolutionists, in terms of recognizing the results of such researches on biological evolution and its credible interpretation of the evolutionists who upheld the origin and evolution of "Sapiens" resulting from great apes in course of the gradual evolutionary progress of life. Kundu analyzes interpretations of molecular and evolutionary geneticists over the last four decades and presents detailed illustrations on the matrilineal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA (represented by mitochondrial Eve as primordial mother), patrilineal inheritance of Y-chromosomal DNA (represented by Y-chromosomal Adam as primordial father). He also presents elaborate structural aspects of the human genome and molecular aspects of the DNA footprint of Sapiens. This book is addressed to heterogeneous readers, graduate, and post-graduate students, research scientists and the general public interested in the origins and biological evolution of humans in view of molecular phylogenetics.

In the context of a diversified and pluralistic arena of contemporary literature embodying previously marginalized voices of region, ethnicity, gender, and class, black poets living in Britain developed a distinct branch of contemporary poetry. Having emerged from a struggle to give voice to marginalized groups in Britain, the poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson, David Dabydeen, and Fred D'Aguiar helped define national identity and explored racial oppression. Motivated by a sense of responsibility towards their communities, these poets undertook the task of transmitting black history to young blacks who risked losing ties to their roots. They also emphasized the necessity of fighting racism by constructing an awareness of Afro-Caribbean national identity while establishing black cultural heritage in contemporary British poetry. In this book, Turkish literary scholar Dilek Bulut Sarıkaya examines their works. Linton Kwesi Johnson's Voices of the Living and the Dead (1974), Inglan is a Bitch (1980), and Tings an Times (1991) open the study, followed by David Dabydeen's Slave Song (1984), Coolie Odyssey (1988), and Turner (1994) and, finally, Fred D'Aguiar's Mama Dot (1985), Airy Hall (1989) and British Subjects (1993).

How did Socrates and Plato know that our planet is shaped like a ball? How were they aware that the earth has twelve tectonic plates? Were the Persians conquered at the naval battle of Salamis thanks to missiles launched from the nearby Thriasion Plain? How can Theocritus' accurate knowledge of the American continent and Plutarch's awareness of the Sargasso Sea be explained? Who was the real victor of the Trojan War, the Greeks or the Trojans? Can the aftermath of that legendary war in Anatolia be regarded as proof that the Greeks were conquered by the Trojans and not vice-versa? In point of fact, almost the whole of ancient Greek civilization is still an enigma. This book, taking as its starting point the assurance of Strabo, the famous geographer of the age of Pax Romana, that Odysseus's peregrinations took place in the Atlantic Ocean, provides evidence for the veracity of this statement.

The Partition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947 unleashed unprecedented violence. In Feminist Fiction and the Indian Partition of 1947, Indian scholar Priyanka Gupta explores how women were doubly suppressed and victimized before and after the partition. The violence, and the displacement of large populations, made this historical episode of separation more and more significant for women. Novels set during the Partition offer unique viewpoints and perspectives that have not previously been explored.

After decades of misinformation during the Soviet period, we can today, with historical hindsight and a better grasp of old and new sources, appraise what Lenin's government meant for Russia and the world.Without Lenin, the alternative models of totalitarian dictatorships in the 20th century, so aptly characterized this way by Hannah Arendt, would have been unthinkable. In what some have called "the Russian century," the Soviet regime was an unflinching enemy to parliamentary democracy, separation of powers, the market economy, civil rights and free speech.Lenin destroyed politics understood as a process of dialogue and negotiation, and implemented a policy of terror.

Folktales of Mizoram is a translated collection of sixty-six short stories from northeast India taken up for a critical evaluation. The stories depict a typical Mizo culture in spirit and practice. This study focuses on the transformation of oral literature into written narratives. Folk practices, folk medicine, folk narratives, traditional songs, and received wisdom dominate these stories. A more insightful approach into folk narratives and songs emphasizes the world of new hermeneutics. The land, the culture, the language, the traditions have been remarkably explored through an elegant reading and evaluation of this collection. Antiquity speaks through the folk tales. The spirit of folktales becomes one of unique exploration of hermeneutics in the end.

The Perfect Officer focuses on the careers of a group of brilliant officers from the Napoleonic Wars up to our own times: what they did right, what they did wrong, and what lessons they drew from their experiences. The book's recurring theme is the importance of imagination, and it demonstrates how these men were constantly inspired by each other and borrowed each other's ideas. A number of these lessons are equally applicable in the civilian sphere, with one notable difference: If a business leader errs, he may lose his position or his investment. An officer risks losing his life and the lives of the men entrusted to his command.

In 1851, Stephen C. Foster purchased a blank notebook, in which he wrote original manuscripts for both famous songs such as "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night!" and "Old Folks at Home," as well as lesser-known songs such as "The Little Ballad Girl," "Ellen Bayne," and "Jenny's Coming O'er the Green." Never published in its entirety, this first edition of Stephen C. Foster's manuscript book preserves his original notes and marginalia while offering valuable insights into the creative process of America's first professional composer.

Exiled Emissary is a biography of the colorful life of George H. Earle, III - a Main Line Philadelphia millionaire, war hero awarded the Navy Cross, Pennsylvania Governor, Ambassador to Austria and Bulgaria, friend and supporter of Franklin Roosevelt, humanitarian, playboy, and spy. Rich in Casablanca-style espionage and intrigue, Farrell's deeply personal study presents FDR and his White House in a new light, especially when they learned in 1943 that high-ranking German officials approached Earle in Istanbul to convey their plot to kidnap Hitler and seek an armistice. When FDR rejected their offer, thereby prolonging World War II, his close relationship with Earle became most inconvenient, resulting in Earle's exile to American Samoa. Earle eventually returned to the United States, renewing his warnings about communism to President Truman, who underestimated the threat as a "bugaboo." Now, over four decades following Earle's death, Farrell has uncovered newly declassified records that give voice to his warnings about a threat we now know should have never been dismissed.

This series of memoirs covers successive attempts by father and son to address the problem of building a rational, inclusive, national political superstructure on an all-Ireland basis, making use of the best of available European experience, and trying to counter the extremes of Catholic nationalism and Orange Protestant hegemonism.

This text discusses Swift's influence on German classicists and romantics as well as the reception theory behind Swift's success in 18th century Germany.