Ten brief essays on how reading and meaningfully engaging with literature can help us live better, more purposeful lives. How do we live successfully? How do we live fully? Identifying the meaning of life and where we are heading preoccupies all of us at some stage or another. Who better to help us articulate this sense of direction than the most articulate people among us? Writers and thinkers, Ben Hutchinson suggests in this sparkling new book, help us reflect on purpose. Interweaving his own (mis-)adventures with those of major authors such as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and R.M. Rilke, Hutchinson proposes ten ways in which reading and writing encourage us to ask difficult questions, project our minds into the past and future, and see ourselves and others differently. Engaging and aphoristic, this book is for anyone who finds themselves wondering how to live more mindfully, more forcefully - more fully.

On Purpose: Ten Lessons on the Meaning of Life

Biographies & Memoirs

Hutchinson, Ben

Arts & Literature

Fourth Estate

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

Modern European literature has traditionally been seen as a series of attempts to assert successive styles of writing as 'new'. In this groundbreaking study, Ben Hutchinson argues that literary modernity can in fact be understood not as that which is new, but as that which is 'late'. Exploring the ways in which European literature repeatedly defines itself through a sense of senescence or epigonality, Hutchinson shows that the shifting manifestations of lateness since romanticism express modernity's continuing quest for legitimacy. With reference to a wide range of authors--from Mary Shelley, Chateaubriand, and Immermann, via Baudelaire, Henry James, and Nietzsche, to Valéry, Djuna Barnes, and Adorno--he combines close readings of canonical texts with historical and theoretical comparisons of numerous national contexts. Out of this broad comparative sweep emerges a taxonomy of lateness, of the diverse ways in which modern writers can be understood, in the words of Nietzsche, as 'creatures facing backwards'. Ambitious and original, Lateness and Modern European Literature offers a significant new model for understanding literary modernity.

Lateness and Modern European Literature

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Comparative Literature is both the past and the future of literary studies. Its history is intimately linked to the political upheavals of modernity: from colonial empire-building in the nineteenth century to the postcolonial culture wars of the twenty-first century, attempts at "comparison" have defined the international agenda of literature. But what is comparative literature? Ambitious readers looking to stretch themselves are usually intrigued by the concept, but uncertain of its implications. And rightly so, in many ways: even the professionals cannot agree on a single term, calling it comparative in English, compared in French, and comparing in German. The very term itself, when approached comparatively, opens up a Pandora's box of cultural differences. Yet this, in a nutshell, is the whole point of comparative literature. To look at literature comparatively is to realize just how much can be learned by looking over the horizon of one's own culture. In an age that is paradoxically defined by migration and border crossing on the one hand, and by a retreat into monolingualism and monoculturalism on the other, the cross-cultural agenda of comparative literature has become increasingly central to the future of the Humanities. We are all, in fact, comparatists, constantly making connections across languages, cultures, and genres as we read. The question is whether we realize it. Outlining the complex history and competing theories of comparative literature, Ben Hutchinson offers an accessible means of entry into a notoriously slippery subject. Ultimately, he places comparative literature at the very heart of literary criticism, for as George Steiner once noted, "to read is to compare." ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Comparative Literature: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Rainer Maria Rike, 1893-1908: Poetry as Process - A Poetics of Becoming

Routledge

Rainer Maria Rilke is arguably the most important modern German-language poet. His New Poems, Duino Elegies, and Sonnets to Orpheus are pillars of 20th-century poetry. Yet his earlier verse is less known. The Book of Hours, written in three bursts between 1899 and 1903, is Rilke's most formative work, covering a crucial period in his rapid ascent from fin-de-siècle epigone to distinctive modern voice. The poems document Rilke's tour of Russia with Lou Andreas-Salomé, his hasty marriage and fathering of a child in Worpswede, and his turn toward the urban modernity of Paris. He assumes the persona of an artist-monk undertaking the Romantics' journey into the self, speaking to God as part transcendent deity, part needy neighbor. The poems can be read simply for their luminous lyricism, captured in Susan Ranson's superb new translation, which reproduces the music of the original German with impressive fluidity. An in-depth introduction explains the context of the work and elucidates its major themes, while the poem-by-poem commentary is helpful to the student and the general reader. A translator's note treating the technical problems of rhythm, meter, and rhyme that the translator of Rilke faces completes the volume. Susan Ranson is the co-translator, with Marielle Sutherland, of Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems (Oxford World's Classics, 2011). Ben Hutchinson is Reader in Modern German at the University of Kent, UK.

Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours: A New Translation with Commentary (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) (Volume 19)

RILKE, RAINER MARIA

Ranson, Susan

Camden House

Rainer Maria Rilke is arguably the most important modern German-language poet. His New Poems, Duino Elegies, and Sonnets to Orpheus are pillars of 20th-century poetry. Yet his earlier verse is less known. The Book of Hours, written in three bursts between 1899 and 1903, is Rilke's most formative work, covering a crucial period in his rapid ascent from fin-de-siècle epigone to distinctive modern voice. The poems document Rilke's tour of Russia with Lou Andreas-Salomé, his hasty marriage and fathering of a child in Worpswede, and his turn toward the urban modernity of Paris. He assumes the persona of an artist-monk undertaking the Romantics' journey into the self, speaking to God as part transcendent deity, part needy neighbor. The poems can be read simply for their luminous lyricism, captured in Susan Ranson's superb new translation, which reproduces the music of the original German with impressive fluidity. An in-depth introduction explains the context of the work and elucidates its major themes, while the poem-by-poem commentary is helpful to the student and the general reader. A translator's note treating the technical problems of rhythm, meter, and rhyme that the translator of Rilke faces completes the volume. Susan Ranson is the co-translator, with Marielle Sutherland, of Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems (Oxford World's Classics, 2011). Ben Hutchinson is Reader in Modern German at the University of Kent, UK. Table of Contents Preface and AcknowledgmentsIntroduction by Ben HutchinsonTranslator's Note by Susan RansonDas Stunden-Buch / The Book of HoursErstes Buch: Das Buch vom mönchischen LebenFirst Book: The Book of Monkish LifeZweites Buch: Das Buch von der PilgerschaftSecond Book: The Book of PilgrimageDrittes Buch: Das Buch von der Armut und vom TodeThird Book: The Book of Poverty and DeathCommentary and Notes: First Book, Second Book, Third BookIndex of English First LinesIndex of German First Lines

Rainer Maria Rilke's The Book of Hours: A New Translation with Commentary (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) (German Edition)

BOYE6

The term Federated Learning was coined as recently as 2016 to describe a machine learning setting where multiple entities collaborate in solving a machine learning problem, under the coordination of a central server or service provider. Each client's raw data is stored locally and not exchanged or transferred; instead, focused updates intended for immediate aggregation are used to achieve the learning objective.Since then, the topic has gathered much interest across many different disciplines and the realization that solving many of these interdisciplinary problems likely requires not just machine learning but techniques from distributed optimization, cryptography, security, differential privacy, fairness, compressed sensing, systems, information theory, statistics, and more.This monograph has contributions from leading experts across the disciplines, who describe the latest state-of-the art from their perspective. These contributions have been carefully curated into a comprehensive treatment that enables the reader to understand the work that has been done and get pointers to where effort is required to solve many of the problems before Federated Learning can become a reality in practical systems.Researchers working in the area of distributed systems will find this monograph an enlightening read that may inspire them to work on the many challenging issues that are outlined. This monograph will get the reader up to speed quickly and easily on what is likely to become an increasingly important topic: Federated Learning.

Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning (Foundations and Trends(r) in Machine Learning)

Computers & Technology

Raskar, Ramesh

Mohri, Mehryar

Liu, Yang

Yang, Qiang

Yu, Han

Bennis, Mehdi

Evans,David

Song, Dawn

Joshi, Gauri

Kairouz, Peter

McMahan, H Brendan

Avent, Brendan

Bellet, Aurélien

Bhagoji, Arjun Nitin

Bonawit, Kallista

Charles, Zachary

Cormode, Graham

Cummings, Rachel

D'Oliveira, Rafael G L

Eichner, Hubert

El Rouayheb, Salim

Gardner, Josh

Garrett, Zachary

Gascón, Adrià

Ghazi, Badih

Gibbons, Phillip B

Gruteser, Marco

Harchaoui, Zaid

He, Chaoyang

He, Lie

Huo, Zhouyuan

Hsu, Justin

Jäggi, Martin

Javidi, Tara

Khodak, Mikhail

Konecný, Jakub

Korolova, Aleksandra

Koushanfar, Farinaz

Koyejo, Sanmi

Lepoint, Tancrède

Mittal, Prateek

Nock, Richard

Özgür, Ayfer

Pagh, Rasmus

Qi, Hang

Ramage, Daniel

Raykova, Mariana

Song, Weikang

Stich, Sebastian U

Sun, Ziteng

Theertha Suresh, Ananda

Tramèr, Florian

Vepakomma, Praneeth

Wang, Jianyu

Xiong, Li

Xu, Zheng

Yu, Felix X

Zhao, Sen

Computer Science

Now Publishers

The meaning of life is a common concern, but what is the meaning of midlife? With the help of illustrious writers such as Dante, Montaigne, Beauvoir, Goethe, and Beckett, The Midlife Mind sets out to answer this question. Erudite but engaging, it takes a personal approach to that most impersonal of processes, aging. From the ancients to the moderns, from poets to playwrights, writers have long meditated on how we can remain creative as we move through our middle years. There are no better guides, then, to how we have regarded middle age in the past, how we understand it in the present, and how we might make it as rewarding as possible in the future.

The Midlife Mind: Literature and the Art of Ageing

Reaktion Books

Rainer Maria Rilke's early verse is often seen as having little relevance to the great achievement of the middle years, the Neue Gedichte. Yet the very different styles of the juvenilia and this new maturity are united by a preoccupation with processes of motion and growth which governs both his life and work. In this meticulous philological study, Ben Hutchinson reassesses every level of Rilke's early poetry, from its motives and metaphors to its very grammar and syntax, in order to trace what he terms a "poetics of becoming". With careful attention to rhythm, resonance and linguistic detail, he illuminates both the hidden patterns of the poetry and the artistic context of the fin-de-siècle. From its roots in the intellectual climate of the 1890s to the poems inspired by Rodin in 1908, Rilke's stylistic development is set against the surprising consistency with which he pursues this poetics of becoming.

Rainer Maria Rike, 1893-1908: Poetry as Process - A Poetics of Becoming (Legenda Main Series)

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