Introduction to Anthropology.

Politics & Social Sciences

Pearson, Roger

Social Sciences

Harcourt College Pub.

Candide is the most famous of Voltaire's "philosophical tales," in which he combined witty improbabilities with the sanest of good sense. First published in 1759, it was an instant bestseller and has come to be regarded as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. What Candide does for chivalric romance, the other tales in this selection--Micromegas, Zadig, The Ingenu, and The White Bull--do for science fiction, the Oriental tale, the sentimental novel, and the Old Testament. The most extensive one-volume selection currently available, this new edition includes a new verse translation of the story Voltaire based on Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale: What Pleases the Ladies. Opening with a revised introduction that reflects recent critical debates and including a new section on Voltaire's verse, this edition also features updated translations, revised notes, and an updated bibliography.

Candide and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)

Literature & Fiction

VOLTAIRE

Contemporary

Oxford University Press

La Bete Humaine (1890), the seventeenth novel in the Rougon-Marcquart series, is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion, and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. This new translation captures Zola's fast-paced yet deliberately dispassionate style, while the Introduction and detailed Notes place the novel in its social, historical, and literary context.

La Bête Humaine (The ^AWorld's Classics)

Zolá, Emile

`If this is the best of all possible worlds, then what must the others be like?' Candide, published simultaneously in five European capitals in 1759, became an instant bestseller and is now regarded by many as one of the key texts of the Enlightenment. A master story-teller, Voltaire found the philosophical tale the perfect vehicle for his preoccupations with evil, human folly, and intolerance. He combined often wildly entertaining action with profoundly serious sense, parodying the traditional chivalric and Oriental tales with which his public was more familiar. This brilliant new translation of five of the major stories - Micromegas, Zadig, The Ingenu, and The White Bull, as well as Candide - is accompanied by a full introduction and notes which are indispensable to the modern reader.

Literary

Did possessing and killing amount to the same thing deep within the dark recesses of the human beast? La Bete humaine (1890), is one of Zola's most violent and explicit works. On one level a tale of murder, passion and possession, it is also a compassionate study of individuals derailed by atavistic forces beyond their control. Zola considered this his `most finely worked' novel, and in it he powerfully evokes life at the end of the Second Empire in France, where society seemed to be hurtling into the future like the new locomotives and railways it was building. While expressing the hope that human nature evolves through education and gradually frees itself of the burden of inherited evil, he is constantly reminding us that under the veneer of technological progress there remains, always, the beast within. This new translation captures Zola's fast-paced yet deliberately dispassionate style, while the introduction and detailed notes place the novel in its social, historical, and literary context.

La Bete Humaine (Oxford World's Classics)

History & Criticism

This book offers the first comprehensive close reading in any language of the complete works of Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). Taking full account of his critical writings on literature and the fine arts, it provides fresh readings of Les Fleurs du Mal and Le Spleen de Paris. It situates these works within the context of nineteenth-century French literature and culture and reassesses Baudelaire's reputation as the 'father' of modern poetry. Whereas he is traditionally considered to have rejected the public role of the writer as moralist, educator, and political leader and to have dedicated himself instead to the exclusive pursuit of beauty in art, this book contends not only that he rejected Art for Art's sake but that he saw in 'beauty'--defined not as an inherent quality but as an effect of harmony and rich conjecture--an alternative ethos with which to resist the tyrannies of ideology and conformism. Contrarian in his thinking and provocatively innovative in his poetic practice, Baudelaire fell foul of the law when six poems in Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) were banned for obscenity. In the second edition (1861), substantially recast and enlarged, the poet as alternative lawgiver made plainer still his resistance to the orthodoxies of his day. In a series of major critical articles he proclaimed the 'government of the imagination', while from 1855 until his death he developed an alternative literary form, the prose poem--a thing of beauty and an invitation to imagine the world afresh, to make our own rules.

The Beauty of Baudelaire: The Poet as Alternative Lawgiver

Stendhal lets his readers experience in the act of reading what his protagonists experience in the act of living, argues this original, well-written study about the relationship between novelist and reader. Novels discussed include Armance, Le Rouge et le Noir, Lucien Leuwen, and La Chartreuse de Parme.

Stendhal's Violin: A Novelist and his Reader

Clarendon Press

This is the first comprehensive study in English of Voltaire's contes philosophiques--the philosophical tales for which he is best remembered and which include his masterpiece Candide. Pearson situates each story in its historical and intellectual context and offers new readings in light of modern critical thinking. He rejects the traditional view that Voltaire's contes were the private expression of his philosophical perplexity, and argues that it is narrative that is Voltaire's essential mode of thought. His book is a witty, lucid, and scholarly guide to the "fables of reason" through which Voltaire's skepticism undermined the contemporary religious and philosophical explanations of human experience.

The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire's "Contes Philosophiques"

Computers & Technology

Web Development & Design

Unfolding Mallarmé provides a coherent account of Mallarmé's poetic developments from his earliest verse to his final masterpiece, "Un coup de Dés." A series of close readings demonstrate the intricate linguistic and formal play to be found in many of his major poems; and, in a detailed analysis of "Un coup de Dés," Pearson explores the "profound calculation" upon which Mallarmé's final, seemingly chaotic masterpiece is based.

Unfolding Mallarmé: The Development of a Poetic Art

What is the public value of poetry? How do poets envisage their own role and function within society? How do we? Do poets seek to shape public opinion and behavior? Should they? Or do they offer alternatives--perhaps sacred alternatives--to political and religious ideologies? Are they what Shelley in 1821 called 'the unacknowledged legislators of the World'? And what might that mean? During the decades immediately preceding the Revolution of 1789 the status of contemporary poetry in France was at its lowest ebb. At the same time the perceived power of the writer to influence public events reached a high-water mark with Voltaire's triumphant return to Paris in 1778. In the course of the next century French poetry enjoyed an extraordinary renaissance and flowering, perhaps its greatest. But what of the poet's public influence? In 1881 the people of Paris processed for six hours past the home of Victor Hugo on the occasion of his 79th birthday, and in 1885 an estimated two million people witnessed his state funeral. But who or what were they acknowledging? Poetry or republicanism? Or perhaps their own power? For with each Revolution that passed--1789, 1830, 1848--French poets themselves felt increasingly marginalized. This study addresses the first part of this story and focuses on the role and function of the poet during the so-called Romantic Period. Beginning with an account of the literary climate in pre-revolutionary France it then maps the changes in that climate wrought by the events of the 1789 Revolution. It describes the new politico-literary agendas set by Chateaubriand and others on the monarchist Right, and by Stael and others on the liberal Left. Against this background it then analyzes in detail the poetic output and public exploits of the three major French poets of the period: Lamartine, Hugo, and Vigny. The Romantic figure of the poet as prophet and magus is habitually dismissed as a cliche. But by focusing on the role of the poet as lawgiver this book reveals the rich and complex terms in which the public function of poetry was debated in post-revolutionary France--and how amidst the centenary celebrations of 1889, as Romanticism gave way to Symbolism, the poet as lawgiver continued to play a central part in that debate.

Unacknowledged Legislators: The Poet as Lawgiver in Post-Revolutionary France

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Books by Pearson, Roger

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pearson, Roger. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Introduction to Anthropology.

Candide and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)

La Bête Humaine (The ^AWorld's Classics)

Candide and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)

La Bete Humaine (Oxford World's Classics)

The Beauty of Baudelaire: The Poet as Alternative Lawgiver

Stendhal's Violin: A Novelist and his Reader

The Fables of Reason: A Study of Voltaire's "Contes Philosophiques"

Unfolding Mallarmé: The Development of a Poetic Art

Unacknowledged Legislators: The Poet as Lawgiver in Post-Revolutionary France