University Press of Florida - Böcker

Former Chief Justice of the High Court of Cairo, Muhammad Said al-Ashmawy is recognized for his part in the struggle against Islamic extremism. This book provides the writings of al-Ashmawy and is edited and introduced in a manner which contextualizes his political and ideological position.

The sixth volume of the Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne contains scholarly editions of two works of Sterne's last year of life, A Sentimental Journey and the Bramine's Journal (Journal to Eliza). As with the first five volumes of the series (Tristram Shandy, the Sermons, and their annotations), the texts are presented as clean texts, with all textual and scholarly apparatus gathered at the end of the volume, including collations with existing manuscripts, a historical collation of the first three editions of Journey, and a comprehensive listing of all emendations made to the texts. While relying on the scholarly edition of Journey by Gardner Stout (1967), this new edition has in many ways, both textual and annotative, altered his earlier work; and it presents as well the first truly scholarly edition of the Journal since Lewis Perry Curtis's edition in Letters (1935). This book continues the tradition of the Florida Edition, providing an abundance of materials that are intended to elucidate but not interpret Sterne's writings. New and Day build on Stout's fine annotations, but they add the commentaries of the intervening 35 years, along with some new recoveries and discoveries, and some corrections to Stout's edition. The annotations to the Journal go well beyond Curtis's commentary, especially in drawing a strong relationship between the Journey and the Journal. As the editors argue in the extensive introduction, the two texts must be read together in order to be understood properly. Sterne's writings in his last year belong together as the complex representation of his hopes and fears, his loves and his longings, as he prepared to face death and judgment. The dual presentation in this volume will not only enhance the reputation of the Bramine's Journal, but will bring to light aspects of A Sentimental Journey previously unnoted.

This text offers an interpretation of the life's work of acclaimed St. Lucian poet, Derek Walcott. It discusses his unique approach to myth, identity, and aesthetics. What emerges is the picture of an epic poet with remarkable gifts working to impart the distinctive wisdom of Caribbean culture.

Far from the forest primeval of popular imagination, the historians and literary scholars in this book describe a Western European landscape just as consciously constructed by its inhabitants as any modern landscape - physically, conceptually, and spiritually. All appearing for the first time in print, their essays provide a wealth of detail on this ""deep ecology"" of the Middle Ages and a better understanding of the creativity and skill of our cultural ancestors.

Edward Condren examines the manuscript of the Gawain-Pearl Poet in the light of a compositional method well recognized from the literature of ancient Greece and Rome through the Renaissance but largely overlooked by modern criticism. Arguing that the manuscript is a single integrated artifact and not merely a collection, he shows that it is held together, as is the universe, by mathematical equations called the Divine Proportion in the Middle Ages and phi by modern mathematicians. More than a critical study of four poems in a manuscript, Condren's detailed discussion of numeric theory reveals the medieval way of understanding the created universe in neo-Pythagorean and Platonic terms, and it underscores the importance of the quadrivium in the medieval view of an ordered universe. Drawing on medieval theories of proportion and harmony, Condren shows that the manuscript is more intricately designed and presented than anyone has yet recognized and that the poet who created this work was better educated and more self-consciously brilliant than most have imagined. He argues that the order in which the poems appear - with the two poems set in the Middle Ages placed at the beginning and end of the manuscript and the two set in the Judaic era located at the manuscript's center - allows the literal narratives to exfoliate historically from the Old Testament world, through the era of the New Testament, and implicitly to the salvation that lies beyond. Working poem by poem, Condren details the mathematical forms governing the structure of the manuscript and guiding its progress, from the calculated use of decorated initials to sophisticated mathematics involving squares, primes, different counting systems, and geometrical schemes of the pentangle and ultimately the cross.

Focusing on the restoration of movie theaters in Atlanta, Biloxi, Birmingham, Durham, Memphis, and Tampa, Janna Jones provides a record of the architectural history and preservation of the opulent urban picture palace. Reflecting our fascination with the past, she recreates the magic of the early years of theaters throughout the southern United States, their demise in the mid-20th century, and their renaissance in the 1970s as the preservation movement swept across the country. From the 1920s through the 1950s, the magnificent movie theaters of the South beckoned to millions of urban patrons. By the 1960s, however, many downtown districts had experienced profound cultural and economic crises and the wrecking ball destroyed scores of the grand old structures. Others barely survived by showing pornographic or racially exploitative movies. Those remaining today are often a critical component of downtown revitalization. Jones discusses attempts to save, restore, and reuse the movie houses. She explores how and why people attempt to resurrect the past and reveals the complex layers of cultural memory. Based on her interviews with preservationists, she offers a cultural analysis of architectural preservation in the late 20th century by examining the practices, philosophies, and politics of preservation today, shedding light on the ways that nostalgia often guides - and misguides - their work. Illustrated with black-and-white photos that evoke an era of glamour and fantasy and utilizing first-hand accounts from past and present employees and patrons of the theaters, this book is the first to detail both the decline and the revival of the urban picture palace.

Kahf establishes herself as a new voice in the tradition of ethnic American poets, blending the experiences of recent Arab-American immigrants into contemporary American scenery. In her poems, Muslim ritual and Qur'anic vocabulary move in next door to the idiom of suburban Americana, and the legendary Scheherazad of the Thousand and One Nights shows up in New Jersey, recast as a sophisticated postcolonial feminist. Kahf's carefully crafted poems do not speak only to important issues of ethnicity, gender, and religious diversity in America, but also to universal human themes of family and kinship, friendship, and the search for a place to pray. She chronicles the specific griefs and pleasures of the immigrant and writes an amulet for womanly power in the face of the world's terrors. Her poetic energy is provocative and sassy, punctuated now and then with a darker poem of elegiac sadness or refined rage.

Kahf establishes herself as a new voice in the tradition of ethnic American poets, blending the experiences of recent Arab-American immigrants into contemporary American scenery. In her poems, Muslim ritual and Qur'anic vocabulary move in next door to the idiom of suburban Americana, and the legendary Scheherazad of the Thousand and One Nights shows up in New Jersey, recast as a sophisticated postcolonial feminist. Kahf's carefully crafted poems do not speak only to important issues of ethnicity, gender, and religious diversity in America, but also to universal human themes of family and kinship, friendship, and the search for a place to pray. She chronicles the specific griefs and pleasures of the immigrant and writes an amulet for womanly power in the face of the world's terrors. Her poetic energy is provocative and sassy, punctuated now and then with a darker poem of elegiac sadness or refined rage.

This handbook offers an illustrated guide to over 250 of the snakes, lizards, turtles, frogs and salamanders common to the Amazonian regions of Peru, Brazil, Bolivia and Colombia. From brightly coloured frogs so small that they fit on a thumbnail to large poisonous snakes camouflaged by green and brown patterned skin, it features all the more frequently seen species as well as types that are less common, and it also provides basic natural history information. Close-up photographs accompany text that describes appearance, range, size and colour and lists similar species.