What does it mean to contemplate? In the Middle Ages, more than merely thinking with intensity, it was a religious practice entailing utter receptiveness to the divine presence. Contemplation is widely considered by scholars today to have been the hi...

As the Christian doctrine of Incarnation asserts, "the Word became Flesh". Yet, while this metaphor is grounded in Christian tradition, its varied functions far exceed any purely theological import. It speaks to the nature of God just as much as to t...

This volume of "Yale French Studies" offers new perspectives on the work of the 2014 Nobel laureate in literature, Patrick Modiano. Including critical reassessments of themes that have informed, indeed haunted, Modiano's fiction from the outset, this...

A major reexamination of the father of the Hudson River School in relation to his European roots and travels Thomas Cole (1801-1848), arguably the greatest American landscape artist of his generation, is presented here in a new light: as an internati...

This richly illustrated book explores the huge creative endeavour behind Tolkien's enduring popularity. Lavishly illustrated with over 300 images of his manuscripts, drawings, maps and letters, the book traces the creative process behind his most fam...

This volume is an excellent introduction to the world of J. R. R. Tolkien. Recounting in images and words the story of his early years and life as a scholar and family man, the book also illustrates some of the primary items associated with "The Hobb...

A writer of enormous erudition and wide-ranging travels, Claudio Magris selects for this volume writings penned during trips and wanderings over the span of several decades. He has traveled through these years with many beloved companions, to whom he...

This engaging study explores how the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and others were taken up by caricaturists as a means of helping the eighteenth-century British public make sense of political issues, outrages, and personalities. The first in-...

Not for sale in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic! From political novels to surrealist poetry and censored rock and roll, Czech underground culture of the later twentieth century displayed an astonishing, and unheralded, variety. This fasc...

Talking lions, philosophical bears, very hungry caterpillars, wise spiders, altruistic trees, companionable moles, urbane elephants: this is the magnificent menagerie that delights our children at bedtime. Within the entertaining pages of many childr...