By Way of the Heart

By Way of the Heart
Author: Mark Oakley
Publisher: Canterbury Press
Total Pages: 147
Release: 2019-08-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 178622206X

Mark Oakley is one of the church’s most outstanding communicators. In this series of fifty beautifully crafted reflections, with characteristic wit, he traverses the landscape of the Christian year. His writing is shaped by a sense that language is sacramental, with a poet’s gift of opening up new worlds and new possibilities simply through words.

The Rose and the Lotus

The Rose and the Lotus
Author: Yousef Daoud
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2009-10-31
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1450080448

The Rose and the Lotus is a compendium of explorations of two of the world's largest wisdom traditions, Sufism and Buddhism, and what the practitioners of these two approaches have in common and may have to learn from each other. It includes chapters on important teaching texts, ancient and modern and the clues they give for practice, interviews with esteemed teachers such as Shaikh Kabir Helminski, Roshi Bernie Glassman, Tibetan philosopher Geshe Sonam Rinchen, as well as memories and reflections on teachers such as Javad Nurbakhsh, Idries Shah, and Inayat Khan. It includes a new look at the mystic works of Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing and their usefulness in contemplation practice. Yousef Daoud PhD, also published as Joe Martin, has been a practitioner of both Sufism and Buddhism. The author of eight books, he teaches meditation as well as spiritual performance practice. Though Sufism and Buddhism have long been treated as religious manifestations, in this fascinating book, Yousef Daoud (Joe) Martin places them squarely among the great wisdom traditions and explores a wide variety of topics relating to both Sufism and Buddhism. One of the most prolific authors for the journal "SUFI", he has done a real service for anyone concerned with spirituality and gnosis. -- Professor Jeffrey Rothschild, C.U.N.Y., Editor, SUFI On Rumi's MATHNAVI: A Stage Adaptation "Absolutely remarkable and memorable! It was as if I had gone to a party, and had been offered an entire pot of gourmet food ... but with every new bite I felt even hungrier [It] was endowed with a complex simplicity or a simple complexity! It was all very inspiring and enlightening ... It felt as if the actors analyzed Rumi's stories, lifting the veils one after another." --- Lida Saeedian, Author and co- translator of The Pocket Rumi On Parabola: Shorter Fictions "...through the tightly structured geometry of this metaphorically rich [work is] recognition of the search we undertake to fix a place for ourselves ... and try to make sense of a confusing, alienating and often combative world." Cheryl Pallant, High Performance

Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide

Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide
Author: Nick Rennison
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2009-11-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1408113953

Deciding what to read next when you've just finished an unputdownable novel can be a daunting task. The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide features hundreds of authors and thousands of titles, with navigation features to lead you on a rich journey through some the best literature to grace our shelves.

Modern British Women Writers

Modern British Women Writers
Author: Vicki K. Janik
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 445
Release: 2002-11-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0313016585

The 20th century witnessed several major cultural movements, including modernism, anti-modernism, and postmodernism. These and other means of understanding and perceiving the world shaped the literature of that era and, with the rise of feminism, resulted in a particularly rich body of literature by women writers. This reference includes alphabetically arranged entries on 58 British women writers of the 20th century. Some of these writers were born in England, while others, such as Katherine Mansfield and Doris Lessing, came from countries of the former Empire or Commonwealth. The volume also includes entries for women of color, such as Kamala Markandaya and Buchi Emecheta. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes an overview of the writer's background, an analysis of her works, an assessment of her achievements, and lists of primary and secondary sources. The volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.

The Fifth Child

The Fifth Child
Author: Doris Lessing
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2010-11-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307777642

Doris Lessing's contemporary gothic horror story—centered on the birth of a baby who seems less than human—probes society's unwillingness to recognize its own brutality.Harriet and David Lovatt, parents of four children, have created an idyll of domestic bliss in defiance of the social trends of late 1960s England. While around them crime and unrest surge, the Lovatts are certain that their old-fashioned contentment can protect them from the world outside—until the birth of their fifth baby. Gruesomely goblin-like in appearance, insatiably hungry, abnormally strong and violent, Ben has nothing innocent or infant-like about him. As he grows older and more terrifying, Harriet finds she cannot love him, David cannot bring himself to touch him, and their four older children are afraid of him. Understanding that he will never be accepted anywhere, Harriet and David are torn between their instincts as parents and their shocked reaction to this fierce and unlovable child whose existence shatters their belief in a benign world.

The Best Novels of the Nineties

The Best Novels of the Nineties
Author: Linda Parent Lesher
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2015-11-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1476603898

This reader’s guide provides uniquely organized and up-to-date information on the most important and enjoyable contemporary English-language novels. Offering critically substantiated reading recommendations, careful cross-referencing, and extensive indexing, this book is appropriate for both the weekend reader looking for the best new mystery and the full-time graduate student hoping to survey the latest in magical realism. More than 1,000 titles are included, each entry citing major reviews and giving a brief description for each book.

Doris Lessing and the Forming of History

Doris Lessing and the Forming of History
Author: Brazil Kevin Brazil
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2016-09-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1474414451

Explores Doris Lessing's innovative engagement with historical change in her own lifetime and beyondThe death of Nobel Prize-winning Doris Lessing sparked a range of commemorations that cemented her place as one of the major figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century world literature. This volume views Lessing's writing as a whole and in retrospect, focusing on her innovative attempts to rework literary form to engage with the challenges thrown up by the sweeping historical changes through which she lived. The 12 original chapters provide new readings of Lessing's work via contexts ranging from post-war youth politics and radical women's writing to European cinema, analyse her experiments with genres from realism to autobiography and science-fiction, and draw on previously unstudied archive material. The volume also explores how Lessing's writing can provide insight into some of the issues now shaping twenty-first century scholarship - including trauma, ecocriticism, the post-human, and world literature - as they emerge as defining challenges to our own present moment in history.Key FeaturesOffers a critical overview of the full range of Lessing's work, setting the agenda for future study of her writingProvides new readings of an unprecedented range of Lessing's writing, including previously unstudied archive material, landmark novels such as The Golden Notebook, drama and reportage, essays, memoirs and short storiesSituates Lessing in relation to new literary and cultural contexts, including the nineteenth-century novel-series, cinema, and post-war youth cultureRelates Lessing's work to contemporary theoretical debates on post-humanism, trauma, ecocriticism, radical women's writing and world literature

Postcolonial African Writers

Postcolonial African Writers
Author: Siga Fatima Jagne
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2012-11-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1136593977

This reference book surveys the richness of postcolonial African literature. The volume begins with an introductory essay on postcolonial criticism and African writing, then presents alphabetically arranged profiles of some 60 writers, including Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Doris Lessing, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Tahbar Ben Jelloun, among others. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes that appear in the author's writings, an overview of the critical response to the author's work, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. These profiles are written by expert contributors and reflect many different perspectives. The volume concludes with a selected general bibliography of the most important critical works on postcolonial African literature.

Plotting Terror

Plotting Terror
Author: Margaret Scanlan
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2001-05-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0813921929

Is literature dangerous? In the romantic view, writers were rebels--Shelley's "unacknowledged legislators of mankind"--poised to change the world. In relation to twentieth-century literature, however, such a view becomes suspect. By looking at a range of novels about terrorism, Plotting Terror raises the possibility that the writer's relationship to actual politics may be considerably reduced in the age of television and the Internet. Margaret Scanlan traces the figure of the writer as rival or double of the terrorist from its origins in the romantic conviction of the writer's originality and power through a century of political, social, and technological developments that undermine that belief. She argues that serious writers like Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Doris Lessing, and Don DeLillo imagine a contemporary writer's encounter with terrorists as a test of the old alliance between writer and revolutionary. After considering the possibility that televised terrorism is replacing the novel, or that writing, as contemporary theory would have it, is itself a form of violence, Scanlan asks whether the revolutionary impulse itself is dying--in politics as much as in literature. Her analyses take the reader on a fascinating exploration of the relationship between actual bombs and stories about bombings, from the modern world to its electronic representation, and from the exercise of political power to the fiction writer's power in the world.

Entering the Fray

Entering the Fray
Author: T. Michael W. Halcomb
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2012-08-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1620323281

In modern times the relationship between the church and academy has been strained and tension-filled. Mainstream church culture has often been skeptical of Bible scholars, depicting them as self-serving intellectuals trying to out-think God by devising new and controversial interpretations. Just as well, academics have often leveled harsh critiques against church culture, painting pastors and laity as anti-intellectual pseudo-spiritualists. Entering the Fray argues that, in spite of the wide gap between the academic and ecclesiastical worlds, the modern church should be aware of the key discussions taking place among biblical scholars. To be sure, the average churchgoer has not been tuned in to scholarly conversations concerning matters such as the Messianic Secret, Q, the Historical Jesus, the pistis Christou debate, and related topics. In fact, they may have purposefully tuned out! Some, however, are simply unaware that any such dialogue has taken place, and beyond the internet, may not have the first clue as to how to explore the details. This primer seeks to function as that "first clue" by helping congregants, pastors, and students of the Bible enter into the fray of scholarly discussions that, over the last few hundred years, have shaped both the academy and church. The companion website can be found at http://michaelhalcomb.com/enteringthefray-home.html