Writing is not like chemical engineering. The figures of speech should not be learned the same way as the periodic table of elements. This is because figures of speech are not about hypothetical structures in things, but about real potentialities within language and within ourselves. The "figurings" of speech reveal the apparently limitless plasticity of language itself. We are inescapably confronted with the intoxicating possibility that we can make language do for us almost anything we want. Or at least a Shakespeare can. The figures of speech help to see how he does it, and how we might. Therefore, in the chapters presented in this volume, the quotations from Shakespeare, the Bible, and other sources are not presented to exemplify the definitions. Rather, the definitions are presented to lead to the quotations. And the quotations are there to show us how to do with language what we have not done before. They are there for imitation.
The drama of Harold Pinter evolves in an atmosphere of mystery. While the surfaces of life are realistically detailed, the patterns below the surface are as obscure as the motives of the characters, the pause as prominent and suggestive as the dialogue. Despite the vivid naturalism of his characters' conversations, they behave very often more like figures in a dream than people with whom one can easily identify, at least on superficial levels.
his single-volume encyclopedia of 260 important women throughout history - and from all parts of the world - groups lively, engrossing biographies, according to their subjects' major claims to fame. Chapters on women adventurers and athletes (Mata Hari, Babe Didrikson), religious figures (Hildegard von Bingen, Mirabai), scientists (Agnodike, Rosalind Franklin), artists (Artemisia Gentileschi, Maya Lin), journalists (Nellie Bly, Elizabeth Mallet), fashion figures (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Madame de Pompadour), and more focus readers' attention on the women themselves and their accomplishments.
Through biographical examinations of some of the key figures in the debate on conservation, this book seeks to explore a range of subjects, such as the evolution of the conservation movement, its implications for policy-makers, and how it impacts the daily lives of people everywhere. The varying approaches taken by these individuals will serve to emphasize that there are many definitions of conservation, and that many viewpoints are valid. Detailed observations of important figures on both sides of the debate, including some of the most famous and familiar and some less so, provide readers with the knowledge they need to form their own opinions on this topic.
This collection of essays by leading and emergent critics of twentieth-century fiction offers a wide-ranging and provocative reassessment of the British novel's achievements after modernism. Focusing on mid-century writing, the book identifies continuities of preoccupation - with national identity, historiography and the challenge to literary form presented by public and private violence--that span the entire century. The book offers new readings of such famous figures as Amis, Golding, Greene and Spark, and reappraises the work of brilliant but less familiar contemporaries including Ann Quin, Elizabeth Taylor and Storm Jameson.
