Search

With its dominance as a European power and the explosion of its prose and dramatic writing, Spain provided an irresistible literary source for English writers of the early modern period. But the deep and escalating political rivalry between the two nations led English writers to negotiate, disavow, or attempt to resolve their fascination with Spain and their debt to Spanish sources. Amid thorny issues of translation and appropriation, imperial competition, the rise of commercial authorship, and anxieties about authenticity, Barbara Fuchs traces how Spanish material was transmitted into English writing, entangling English literature in questions of national and religious identity, and how piracy came to be a central textual metaphor, with appropriations from Spain triumphantly reimagined as heroic looting. From the time of the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada of the 1580s, through the rise of anti-Spanish rhetoric of the 1620s, The Poetics of Piracy charts this connection through works by Ben Jonson, William Shakespeare, Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, and Thomas Middleton. Fuchs examines how their writing, particularly for the stage, recasts a reliance on Spanish material by constructing narratives of militaristic, forcible use. She considers how Jacobean dramatists complicated the texts of their Spanish contemporaries by putting them to anti-Spanish purposes, and she traces the place of Cervantes's Don Quixote in Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Shakespeare's late, lost play Cardenio. English literature was deeply transnational, even in the period most closely associated with the birth of a national literature. Recovering the profound influence of Spain on Renaissance English letters, The Poetics of Piracy paints a sophisticated picture of how nations can serve, at once, as rivals and resources.

Material de Inglês

A collection of three of author, Barbara Robinson's stories.

These four stories are about Devora Marcus, an elderly widow in Santa Monica, California. In The Conversion, Devora, a non-observant Jew, becomes a yoga master's disciple and undergoes a spirtual awakening, only to find out that she is, in fact, rooted in her Jewishness. Exile tells of a night Devora spends in her backyard contemplating mortality, time, and space. A Holocaust in My Breakfast Room is a chilling tale of elder abuse, with an imposter invading Devora's home and taking advantage of her generosity. The Countess recalls Devora's childhood; in it she tells her granddaughter about her childhood in Russia and illuminates a moment of courage and compassion during that tumultuous time.

"Frozen rivers, ice bridges, and runaway huskies are romantic tales of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, until Andy Middleton moves to Alaska. She soon discovers there is more to mushing than standing on the back of a sled. The brooding photographer, Ryan North, is no help whatsoever. After she bribes him to teach her to mush, and they are forced to spend the night in a storm, Andy discovers a talented man. The last thing Ryan North wants is to get involved with the foolish redhead from SnowDen Kennels. She nearly hit him with her Jeep and she has a temper to match her hair. While he doesn't trust her, he admires her unfailing resilience and forthright determination" -- from author's web page.

This book is devoted to my lovely wife Barbara, always known as Babs, who died on the 16th February 2013. She was very artistic and had a lovely sense of humour that never left her even in the latter years when MS confined her to a wheelchair. This book is not only to provide those who knew her with happy memories of Babs, but it is also intended to help financially the MS Society in the hope that one day soon they might find a cure for this dreadful disease. Bernard Jones

The Marquis of Whisinford and his friend Lord Alfred Middleton meet at White's Club and tell each other how bored they are with the London Season and the same parties with the same people night after night. They commiserate with each other for finding life so repetitive where nothing new ever happens. Listening to them, the old Duke of Dunstead tells them that he has a solution to their problem and so he bets one of his well bred horses against one of theirs that, if they go out disguised as ordinary men, they will undoubtedly find an adventure of some kind on the open road. Because it is a bet and betting at White's is traditional, the Marquis agrees to ride North as far as Northumberland disguised as an ordinary man, while Lord Alfred is to go South to Land's End. The Marquis sets off alone, his only possessions being what he can carry on his horse, Samson, using the name of Neil Barlow. But he has not gone very far when a very pretty girl joins him on the road in a state of agitation and asks him if he will be kind enough to allow her to ride beside him. She explains that she is running away from her stepfather who is forcing her into marriage with a man she loathes and detests. She tells the Marquis that her name is Velina, but does not say anymore and he tells her only his Christian name and they ride on until they reach what appears to be a quiet inn. After dinner, when the Marquis goes out to see if their horses are happy, he overhears three men talking and learns that they have been sent by Velina's stepfather to kidnap her and take her forcibly back to her home. The Marquis alerts Velina and they slip away at four o'clock in the morning before anyone else is awake and it is then that the Marquis suggests that they should stay off the main road and travel North by the twisting lanes of England. How they encounter even more dramas than they have already. How they rescue a small boy and his dog from a cruel drunkard. How eventually Velina saves the Marquis's horse and him from a highwayman and how they find even more on a road to romance, is all told in this exciting story by BARBARA CARTLAND.

A family saga (and thinly disguised autobiography), spanning five decades from the 1920s to the 1960s, this novel by Barbara Griffith was often referred to by her son, Bill Griffith, in creating his graphic memoir, "Invisible Ink: My Mother's Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist".