Mark - Böcker

An essential guide to understanding literary theory and criticism in the European traditionWhat is Literature? A Critical Anthology explores the most fundamental question in literary studies. ‘What is literature?’ is the name of a problem that emerges with the idea of literature in European modernity. This volume offers a cross-section of modern literary theory and reflects on the history of thinking about literature as a specific form. What is Literature? reveals how ideas of the literary draw on the foundations of Western thought in ancient Greece and Rome, charting the emergence of modern literature in the eighteenth century, and including selections from the present state of the art.The anthology includes the work of leading writers and critics of the last two thousand years including Plato, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jacques Rancière, and many others. The book is an insightful examination of the nature of literature, its meanings and values, functions and forms, provocations and mysteries.What is Literature? brings together in one volume influential and intriguing essays that show our enduring fascination with the idea of literature. This important guide: Contains a broad selection of the most significant texts on the topic of literatureIncludes leading writers from ancient times to the most recent thinkers on literature and criticismEncourages readers to reflect on the varied meanings of “literature”What is Literature? A Critical Anthology is a unique collection of texts that will appeal to every student and scholar of literature and literary criticism in the European tradition.

This title offers a compelling look at a modern rite of passage by the acclaimed documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark. The high school prom is an American (but fast becoming an international) tradition and rite of passage. The internationally renowned documentary photographer Mary Ellen Mark took on the extraordinary challenge of working with the Polaroid 20X24 Land camera to produce this fascinating look at dozens of young people from a diverse range of backgrounds on one of the most memorable nights of their lives. Travelling across America from New York City via Charlottesville and Houston to Los Angeles from 2006 to 2009, Mary Ellen photographed prom-goers at thirteen schools, capturing scores of images. Here, 129 large-format photographs are reproduced as an affectionate tribute to the prom goers punctuated with their own quotations, some of which are downright comical, while others are deeply touching. The result is a revealing document of American youth at the turn of the twenty-first century.Mary Ellen's husband, the filmmaker Martin Bell, collaborated with her on the project to produce and direct a film, also called Prom, featuring interviews with the students about their lives, dreams, and hopes for the future. A DVD of the film is packaged with the book.