A Severed Head

A Severed Head
Author: Iris Murdoch
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 199
Release: 1976-11-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101495839

A novel about the frightfulness and ruthlessness of being in love, from the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea, The Sea Martin Lynch-Gibson believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional reeducation. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendor at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. As his Medusa informs him, “this is nothing to do with happiness.” A Severed Head was adapted for a successful stage production in 1963 and was later made into a film starring Claire Bloom, Lee Remick, Richard Attenborough, and Ian Holm.

The Severed Head

The Severed Head
Author: Julia Kristeva
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2012
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0231157207

Renowned philosopher and cultural theorist Kristeva (Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection) offers an extended consideration of artistic figurations of the severed head, the organizing theme to an exhibition she coordinated at the Louvre in 1998. Though she follows a single historical trajectory, moving from Paleolithic skull cults to antique Greek sculpture to the Surrealist drawings, Kristeva eschews the disciplinary constraints of art history, instead employing psychoanalysis to explore the intertwined problems of representation and mortality posed by the severed head. For Kristeva, the capacity to figure the life of the mind first requires a confrontation with this horrific object that stands at the boundary between life and death, registering not only the loss of corporeal form but also subjective interiority. Though this book does not engage with recent images of decapitation, it is not without contemporary political-cultural import; for Kristeva, these cruel artistic figurations offer us the capacity to contemplate the sacred within a technology-driven contemporary visual culture. Verdict While a challenging text, this beautifully written and richly layered meditation on mortality and representation will undoubtedly appeal to those readers interested in semiotic and psychoanalytically informed readings of art.-Jonathan Patkowski, CUNY Graduate Ctr.(c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Severed

Severed
Author: Frances Larson
Publisher: Granta Books
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2014-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1847088015

Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and compelling as ever. From shrunken heads to trophies of war; from memento mori to Damien Hirst's With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising scientists, Larson explores the bizarre, often gruesome and confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story.

The Beginning of Everything

The Beginning of Everything
Author: Robyn Schneider
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2013-08-27
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0062217151

Robyn Schneider's The Beginning of Everything is a witty and heart-wrenching teen novel that will appeal to fans of books by John Green and Ned Vizzini, novels such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and classics like The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye. Varsity tennis captain Ezra Faulkner was supposed to be homecoming king, but that was before—before his girlfriend cheated on him, before a car accident shattered his leg, and before he fell in love with unpredictable new girl Cassidy Thorpe. As Kirkus said in a starred review, "Schneider takes familiar stereotypes and infuses them with plenty of depth. Here are teens who could easily trade barbs and double entendres with the characters that fill John Green's novels." Funny, smart, and including everything from flash mobs to blanket forts to a poodle who just might be the reincarnation of Jay Gatsby, The Beginning of Everything is a refreshing contemporary twist on the classic coming-of-age novel—a heart-wrenching story about how difficult it is to play the part that people expect, and how new beginnings can stem from abrupt and tragic endings.

Severed Heads: The Hearts of the Helpless, We DIE in Gray Skies, The Wicked Within

Severed Heads: The Hearts of the Helpless, We DIE in Gray Skies, The Wicked Within
Author: William Goodman
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2017-07-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1483473023

Three completely unique stories that form one cohesive story. Each story is written in a different writing style to capture a new perspective. ""Severed Heads"" is enhanced poetry. It's like you're reading the lyrics to any great hip-hop song. It flows seamlessly with captivating imagery and creative word play. Each story is dark and heavy and covers a wide range of topics like: addiction, depression, vanity, sexual abuse, religion, and revenge. William has been crafting a unique writing style. His love for lyrical hip-hop has lead him to create a genre he calls, "rhyme story." Meaning, it's lush like poetry, but has the technique of any skilled lyricists.

The Severed Head and the Grafted Tongue

The Severed Head and the Grafted Tongue
Author: Patricia Palmer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107041848

This book explores actual and literary depictions of beheadings in sixteenth-century Ireland and addresses how violence is transcribed into art.

Severed Heads, Broken Hearts

Severed Heads, Broken Hearts
Author: Robyn Schneider
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 147111547X

Perfect for fans of John Green, Nicola Yoon and Gayle Forman. If you've managed to survive disaster, what happens when it strikes again? Ezra Faulkner believes everyone has a tragedy waiting for them - a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen. His own tragedy waited until he had everything to lose. In one night, a reckless driver shatters Ezra's knee, his athletic career, and his perfect life. No longer part of the popular crowd, Ezra finds himself at the table of misfits, where he encounters Cassidy Thorpe. Intelligent, effortless and wonderfully weird, she is unlike anyone Ezra's ever met before. Together they discover flash mobs, buried treasure, secret movie screenings and a poodle with a questionable history. But as Ezra dives into new friendships and new love, he is forced to ask: if you've managed to survive disaster, what happens when it strikes again? "Maybe it's time to expand your list of literary crushes to include someone other than Augustus Waters." MTV.com "I couldn't help but think of John Green's novels - I think his fans will eat this up." Publishers Weekly "Heartbreaking and hilarious. I have no doubt that girls everywhere are going to fall madly, deeply, hopelessly in love with Ezra Faulkner." Sarah Mlynowski, NYT bestselling author. "This is one of the most literary teen books I've read for a long time - up there with John Green - and it's a delight to read… the ending absolutely blew me away, being unpredictable, powerful, and altogether fantastic." The Bookbag Severed Heads, Broken Hearts is a lyrical, witty and heart-wrenching novel about how difficult it is to play the part that people expect, and how new beginnings can stem from abrupt and tragic endings.

Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found

Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found
Author: Frances Larson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2014-11-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0871404958

A “wide-ranging and thoughtful” (Wall Street Journal) exploration of the varied obsessions that the “civilized West” has had with decapitated heads and skulls. The human head is exceptional. It accommodates four of our five senses, encases the brain, and boasts the most expressive set of muscles in the body. It is our most distinctive attribute and connects our inner selves to the outer world. Yet there is a dark side to the head’s preeminence, one that has, in the course of human history, manifested itself in everything from decapitation to headhunting. So explains anthropologist Frances Larson in this fascinating history of decapitated human heads. From the Western collectors whose demand for shrunken heads spurred massacres to Second World War soldiers who sent the remains of the Japanese home to their girlfriends, from Madame Tussaud modeling the guillotined head of Robespierre to Damien Hirst photographing decapitated heads in city morgues, from grave-robbing phrenologists to skull-obsessed scientists, Larson explores our macabre fixation with severed heads.

Hotel Brasil

Hotel Brasil
Author: Frei Betto
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2014-03-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1908524278

Rio de Janeiro. A family hotel whose clients reflect Brazilian society: multi-racial, with starkly contrasting backgrounds, and destitute. The first victim is found decapitated in bed, the head lying on the floor of his room. An eerie Mona Lisa smile on the victim's face and no evidence of a struggle indicate a murderer received as a friend. Other hotel guests are eventually killed, all decapitated. A classical crime novel in one way but really an opportunity for the author to describe Brazilian society, especially those left behind.

Severed Heads and Martyred Souls

Severed Heads and Martyred Souls
Author: Laura Poulosky
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2003
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

Since capital punishment was such a hotly debated issue in Europe during the early nineteenth century, and since crime, trials, and executions provided ideal material for the melodrama that characterizes French Romanticism, several authors of the period naturally exploited the death penalty in their works. Severed Heads and Martyred Souls examines the Romantics' obsession with capital punishment, analyzing its literary treatment in texts by Hugo, Lamartine, Eugene Sue, Dumas the elder, Vigny, Balzac, Stendhal, and Nodier. The book explores the effects of death sentences on character and plot development, the language of the texts, and the overt or implicit moral and political messages of each author, and successfully demonstrates that reflecting upon the French Romantics' treatment of capital punishment is both important to understanding the Romantic movement, and instructive for current debate on the issue of capital punishment.