Your Search Results

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2017

        Terry Gilliam

        by Peter Marks

        Terry Gilliam presents a sustained examination of one of cinema's most challenging and lauded auteurs, proposing fresh ways of seeing Gilliam that go beyond reductive readings of him as a gifted but manic fantasist. Analysing Gilliam's work over nearly four decades, from the brilliant anarchy of his Monty Python animations through the nightmarish masterpiece Brazil to the provocative Gothic horror of Tideland, it critically examines the variety and richness of Gilliam's sometimes troubled but always provocative output. The book situates Gilliam within the competing cultural contexts of the British, European and American film industries, examining his regular struggles against aesthetic and commercial pressures. He emerges as a passionate, immensely creative director, whose work encompasses a dizzying array of material: anarchic satire, childhood and adult fantasy, dystopia, romantic comedy, surrealism, road movie, fairy tale and the Gothic. The book charts how Gilliam interweaves these genres and forms to create magical interfaces between reality and the illuminating, frightening but liberating worlds of the imagination. Scrutinising the neglected importance of literature and adaptation in Gilliam's career, this study also observes him through the lenses of auteurism, genre, performance, design and national culture, explaining how someone born in Minnesota and raised in California came to be one of British television and film's most compelling figures.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2006

        Socio-ideological fantasy and the Northern Ireland conflict

        The Other side

        by Adrian Millar, Peter Lawler, Emmanuel Pierre Guittet

        Conducting a Lacanian-inspired psychoanalysis of some of the most candid interview materials ever gathered from former IRA members and loyalists, the author demonstrates through a careful examination of their slips of the tongue, jokes, rationalisations and contradictions, that it is the unconscious dynamics of socio-ideological fantasy, i.e. the unconscious pleasure people find in suffering, domination, submission, ignorance, failure and rivalry over jouissance, that lead to the reproduction of antagonism between the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. In the light of this, he concludes that traditional approaches to conflict resolution which overlook the unconscious are doomed to failure and that a Lacanian psychoanalytic understanding of socio-ideological fantasy has great potential for informing the way we understand and study all inter-religious and ethnic conflicts. Whether you find yourself agreeing with the arguments in this book or not, you are sure to find it a welcome change from both the existing, mainly conservative, analyses of the Northern Ireland conflict and traditional approaches to conflict resolution.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2023

        The illusion of the Burgundian state

        by Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin, Christopher Fletcher

        On 25 January 1474, Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, appeared before his subjects in Dijon. Robed in silk, gold and precious jewels and wearing a headpiece that gave the illusion of a crown, he made a speech in which he cryptically expressed his desire to become a king. Three years later, Charles was killed at the battle of Nancy, an event that plunged the Great Principality of Burgundy into chaos. This book, innovative and essential, not only explores Burgundian history and historiography but offers a complete synthesis about the nature of politics in this region, considered both from the north and the south. Focusing on political ideologies, a number of important issues are raised relating to the medieval state, the signification of the nation under the 'Ancien Regime', the role of warfare in the creation of political power and the impact of political loyalties in the exercise of government. In doing so, the book challenges a number of existing ideas about the Burgundian state.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 2024

        A book of monsters

        Promethean horror in modern literature and culture

        by David Ashford

        This books traces the rise to prominence in the twentieth-century of a sub-genre of gothic fiction that is, emphatically, a horror of enlightenment rationality rather than gothic darkness, examining post-modern revisions of Modernist "Promethean" tropes in an eclectic range of gothic, fantasy and SF writing. Whether the subject be terror of London's churches in the psychogeographical fiction of Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, the Orcs in the linguistic fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkien, King Kong, killer-computers, or demon-children in post-war British science-fiction, A Book of Monsters offers illuminating perspectives on the darker recesses of the post-modern imagination, setting out a compelling, and comprehensive, overview on our contemporary unconscious.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2001

        The New Inn

        By Ben Jonson

        by Michael Hattaway

        The New Inn is one of the most neglected of Jonson's plays which is now finding a new and appreciative audience. May be read, according to this Editor's introduction, as a tribute to Shakespeare, and as a belated recognition that the fantasies of romance contain profound truths. The spelling has been modernised and the text updated and corrected for this paperback edition. There is also a critical introduction, helpful appendices and a commentary which explains difficult or significant passages within the play. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2018

        Clive Barker

        Dark imaginer

        by Sorcha Ní Fhlainn

        Clive Barker: Dark imaginer explores the diverse literary, film and visionary creations of the polymathic and influential British artist Clive Barker. In this necessary and timely collection, innovative essays by leading scholars in the fields of literature, film and popular culture explore Barker's contribution to gothic, fantasy and horror studies, interrogating his creative legacy. The volume consists of an extensive introduction and twelve groundbreaking essays that critically reevaluate Barker's oeuvre. These include in-depth analyses of his celebrated and lesser known novels, short stories, theme park designs, screen and comic book adaptations, film direction and production, sketches and book illustrations, as well as responses to his material from critics and fan communities. Clive Barker: Dark imaginer reveals the breadth and depth of Barker's distinctive dark vision, which continues to fascinate and flourish.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2023

        The fall and rise of the English upper class

        Houses, kinship and capital since 1945

        by Daniel R. Smith

        The fall and rise of the English upper class explores the role traditionalist worldviews, articulated by members of the historic upper-class, have played in British society in the shadow of her imperial and economic decline in the twentieth century. Situating these traditionalist visions alongside Britain's post-Brexit fantasies of global economic resurgence and a socio-cultural return to a green and pleasant land, Smith examines Britain's Establishment institutions, the estates of her landed gentry and aristocracy, through to an appetite for nostalgic products represented with pastoral or pre-modern symbolism. It is demonstrated that these institutions and pursuits play a central role in situating social, cultural and political belonging. Crucially these institutions and pursuits rely upon a form of membership which is grounded in a kinship idiom centred upon inheritance and descent: who inherits the houses of privilege, inherits England.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        March 2005

        French cinema in the 1970s

        The echoes of May

        by Alison Smith

        This book re-examines French cinema of the 1970s. It focuses on the debates which shook French cinema, and the calls for film-makers to rethink their manner of filming, subject matter and ideals in the immediate aftermath of the student revolution of May 1968. Alison Smith examines the effect of this re-thinking across the spectrum of French production, the rise of new genres and re-formulation of older ones. Chapters investigate political thrillers, historical films, new naturalism and Utopian fantasies, dealing with a wide variety of films. A particular concern is the extent to which film-makers' ideas and intentions are contained in or contradicted by their finished work, and the gradual change in these ideas over the decade. The final chapter is a detailed study of two directors who were deeply involved in the debates and events of the 70s, William Klein and Alain Tanner, here taken as exemplary spokesmen for those changing debates as their echoes reached the cinema. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        French cinema in the 1970s

        The echoes of May

        by Alison Smith

        This book re-examines French cinema of the 1970s. It focuses on the debates which shook French cinema, and the calls for film-makers to rethink their manner of filming, subject matter and ideals in the immediate aftermath of the student revolution of May 1968. Alison Smith examines the effect of this re-thinking across the spectrum of French production, the rise of new genres and re-formulation of older ones. Chapters investigate political thrillers, historical films, new naturalism and Utopian fantasies, dealing with a wide variety of films. A particular concern is the extent to which film-makers' ideas and intentions are contained in or contradicted by their finished work, and the gradual change in these ideas over the decade. The final chapter is a detailed study of two directors who were deeply involved in the debates and events of the 70s, William Klein and Alain Tanner, here taken as exemplary spokesmen for those changing debates as their echoes reached the cinema.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        July 2008

        States of suspense

        The nuclear age, postmodernism and United States fiction and prose

        by Daniel Cordle

        When the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, it precipitated a nuclear age that shaped the Cold War and post-Cold War periods. States of suspense is about the representation of this nuclear age in United States literature from 1945-2005. The profound psychological and cultural impact of living in anticipation of the Bomb is apparent not only in end-of-the-world fantasies, but also in mainstream and postmodern literature. This book traces the ways in which key motifs - the fragility of reality; the fear of closure; the inadequacies of language to represent the world - move between nuclear and postmodern cultures of the Cold War era. Taking three symbolically threatened environments - the home, the city, the planet - the book explores their recasting as 'nuclear places' in literature, and shows how these nuclear concerns resonate with those of other cultures. States of suspense will be of interest to students and scholars of American literature, and postmodern and technological culture. It will also be interest to those more generally intrigued by the cultural fallout of the nuclear age. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Children's & YA

        Wild. They Hear You Thinking

        by Ella Blix

        They hear you thinking. But you can’t understand them. Not yet! After a terrifying experience on a school trip to the forest, Noomi isn’t the same anymore. Fragments of memories that are as thrilling as they are disturbing continually lead her back to this same day in the forest. Something has happened to her since then and she has to find out what went on there. Why can’t she remember? Why does she now feel so close to animals? One secret experiment. Four young offenders. Animals acting like humans in the forest. Evolution at a turning point - FEEL NATURE! Atmospheric, enigmatic and disturbing – the new novel from the prize-winning author duo Ella Blix, consisting of Antje Wagner and Tania Witte. 2019 literary awards: the Mannheim Feuergriffel (Fire Pen) for Tania Witte and the town of Wetzlar’s Fantasy Prize. Printed on recycled paper and certified with the Blue Angel.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        December 2024

        Addressing the other woman

        Textual correspondences in feminist art and writing

        by Kimberly Lamm

        This book analyses how three artists - Adrian Piper, Nancy Spero and Mary Kelly - worked with the visual dimensions of language in the 1960s and 1970s. These artists used text and images of writing to challenge female stereotypes, addressing viewers and asking them to participate in the project of imagining women beyond familiar words and images of subordination. The book explores this dimension of their work through the concept of 'the other woman', a utopian wish to reach women and correspond with them across similarities and differences. To make the artwork's aspirations more concrete, it places the artists in correspondence with three writers - Angela Davis, Valerie Solanas, and Laura Mulvey - who also addressed the limited range of images through which women are allowed to become visible.

      • Trusted Partner
        Children's & YA

        The Candy Guild (1). The Magic Pact

        by Tanja Voosen/ Viktoria Gavrilenko

        The most magical adventure since the discovery of chocolate! Do you believe in magic and miracles? Everyone in the little town of Belony takes magic and miracles for granted – everyone except Elina, who thinks it’s all a load of nonsense. That is, until her nervous neighbour Charlie happens to get hold of a bar of chocolate that has a very strange effect on her. Suddenly Elina is convinced that Charlie has fallen under a spell. Of all people, it’s shy Robin who comes to the girl’s rescue. He is a member of a Candy Guild family – people who have the ability to create magic sweets that will help others. This is how he knows that only the mysterious Candy Guild can lift the curse on Charlie. With a suitcase full of magic sweets, the three of them set out on a dangerous quest. Because not everyone keeps to the pact that magic sweets should only be used to do good… The Candy Guild. The Magic Pact is the first in a new series of magic-fantasy books for children of 9+ - as enchanting as chocolate and as wild as a Christmas cracker!

      • Trusted Partner
        April 2004

        Illusion Fortschritt

        Die vielfältigen Wege der Evolution

        by Gould, Stephen J

      • Trusted Partner
        January 1998

        Illusion Fortschritt

        Die vielfältigen Wege der Evolution

        by Gould, Stephen J / Englisch Vogel, Sebastian

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        September 2018

        Blühende Fantasie

        Die eigene Lebensvision gestalten

        by Francia, Luisa

      Subscribe to our

      newsletter