Motives for Fiction

Motives for Fiction
Author: Robert Alter
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 1984
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780674587625

"For many serious readers," Robert Alter writes in his preface, "the novel still matters, and I have tried here to suggest some reasons why that should be so." In his wide-ranging discussion, Alter examines the imitation of reality in fiction to find out why mimesis has become problematic yet continues to engage us deeply as readers. Alter explores very different sorts of novels, from the self-conscious artifices of Sterne and Nabokov to what seem to be more realistic texts, such as those of Dickens, Flaubert, John Fowles, and the early Norman Mailer. Attention is also given to such individual critics as Edmund Wilson and Alfred Kazin and to current critical schools. In Alter's essays, a particular book or movement or juxtaposition of writers provides the occasion for the exploration of a general intellectual issue. The scrutiny of well-chosen passages, the joining of images or themes or ideas, the associative and intuitive processes that lead to the right phrase and the right loop of syntax for the matter at hand-all these come together unexpectedly to illuminate both the text in question and the general issue. Recent discussions of mimesis in fiction generally proceed from a single thesis. By contrast, Motives for Fiction offers an empirical approach, attempting to define mimesis in its various guises by careful critical readings of a heterogeneous sampling of literary texts. Intelligent and good-humored, the book is also old-fashioned enough to wonder whether mimesis might not be a task or responsibility to which much contemporary fiction has not proved entirely adequate.

Beyond the Image Machine

Beyond the Image Machine
Author: David Tomas
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2004-03-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1847140815

Beyond the Image Machine is an eloquent and stimulating argument for an alternative history of scientific and technological imaging systems. Drawing on a range of hitherto and marginalised examples from the world of visual representation and the work of key theorists and thinkers, such as Latour, de Certeau, McLuhan and Barthes, David Tomas offers a disarticulated and deviant view of the relationship between archaic and new representations, imaging technologies and media induced experience. Rejecting the possibility of absolute forms of knowledge, Tomas shows how new media technologies have changed the nature of established disciplines. The book develops Tomas's own theory of transcultural space and makes several original contributions to current debates on the culture of advanced technology.

Thinking Outside the Crime and Justice Box

Thinking Outside the Crime and Justice Box
Author: Diane Dimond
Publisher: Creators Publishing
Total Pages: 598
Release: 2016-01-01
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1945630248

In this compilation of Dimond’s most thought-provoking columns, readers will be introduced to crime and justice situations they likely had no idea existed and encouraged to think outside the box about solutions to thorny issues. No true crime topic is off-limits for Dimond: from prisons to playgrounds, human trafficking to horrific serial killers, heroes to heroin addicts, Dimond’s keen eye for the compelling human stories at the core of crime often result in unforgettable columns.

Metamorphoses of Helen

Metamorphoses of Helen
Author: Mihoko Suzuki
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2018-07-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 150173234X

Mihoko Suzuki sheds light on a literary tradition that seemingly holds Helen of Troy and her descendants responsible for causing epic conflicts, while it appropriates the woman's perspective as a source of insight and poetic power.

The Whites Want Every Thing

The Whites Want Every Thing
Author: Will Bagley
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 704
Release: 2019-10-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806165499

American Indians have been at the center of Mormon doctrine from its very beginnings, recast as among the Children of Israel and thereby destined to play a central role in the earthly triumph of the new faith. The settling of the Mormons among the Indians of what became Utah Territory presented a different story—a story that, as told by the settlers, robbed the Native people of their voices along with their homelands. The Whites Want Everything restores those Native voices to the history of colonization of the American Southwest. Collecting a wealth of documents from varied and often-suppressed sources, this volume allows both Indians and Latter-day Saints to tell their stories as they struggled to determine who would control the land and resources of North America’s Great Basin. Journals, letters, reports, and recollections, many from firsthand participants, reveal the complexities of cooperation and conflict between Native Americans and Mormon Anglo-Americans. The documents offer extraordinarily wide-ranging and detailed perspectives on the fight to survive in one of Earth’s most challenging environments. Editor Will Bagley, a scholar of Mormon history and the American West, provides cultural, historical, and environmental context for the documents, which include the Indians’ own eloquent voices as preserved in the region’s remarkable archives. In all these accounts, we see how some of western North America’s most colorful historical characters recorded their adventures and regarded their painful stories—and how, in doing so, they bring light to a dark chapter in American history. Ranging from initial encounters through the 1850–1872 war against Native tribes, to recitations of Mormon millennial dreams continued long after Brigham Young’s death in 1877, this is history as it happened, not as some might wish it had, at long last returning the original owners of today’s Utah, Nevada, and Colorado to their rightful place in history.

Homicide in Criminal Law

Homicide in Criminal Law
Author: Alan Reed
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2018-10-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1351016296

This volume presents a leading contribution to the substantive arena relating to homicide in the criminal law. In broad terms, the ambit of homicide standardisations in extant law is contestable and opaque. This book provides a logical template to focus the debate. The overall concept addresses three specific elements within this arena, embracing an overarching synergy between them. This edifice engages in an examination of UK provisions, and in contrasting these provisions against alternative domestic jurisdictions as well as comparative contributions addressing a particularised research grid for content. The comparative chapters provide a wider background of how other legal systems treat a variety of specialised issues relating to homicide in the context of the criminal law. The debate in relation to homicide continues apace for academics, practitioners and within the criminal justice system. Having expert descriptions of the wider issues surrounding the particular discussion and of other legal systems’ approaches serves to stimulate and inform that debate. This collection will be a major source of reference for future discussion.

Law and Order in a Weak State

Law and Order in a Weak State
Author: Sinclair Dinnen
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2000-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780824822804

Twenty-five years after independence, Papua New Guinea is beset by social, economic, and political problems: poverty and inequality, a young and expanding population, a stagnant economy, corruption, and rising crime. The state has not only failed to contain these problems but has become progressively implicated in their persistence. Escalating levels of violence and lawlessness are seen by many as the most serious challenge facing the young country. This book examines these problems of order in light of Papua New Guinea’s remarkable social diversity and the impact of rapid and pervasive processes of change. Three original and strategic case studies involving urban gangs, mining security, and election violence form the core of the work. Each case study looks at particular forms of conflict, and the responses these engender, across different socioeconomic contexts and geographic locations. Empirical data are analyzed through a common framework that employs material, cultural and institutional perspectives, allowing readers to view the three cases through different theoretical prisms, identify linkages between them, and, in the process, build a larger picture of the post-colonial social order. Law and Order in a Weak State charts not only the problems of crime and lawlessness in Papua New Guinea but also the possibilities for constructive, pragmatic solutions. It will be of great interest to scholars, aid and policy officials, and others concerned with understanding the social complexities and challenges of contemporary Papua New Guinea.