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The Improbability of Love: SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016
by Hannah RothschildWINNER OF THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE FOR COMIC FICTION 2016SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2016 A BBC Radio 2 Book Club pickWhen lovelorn Annie McDee stumbles across a dirty painting in a junk shop while looking for a present for an unsuitable man, she has no idea what she has discovered. Soon she finds herself drawn unwillingly into the tumultuous London art world, populated by exiled Russian oligarchs, avaricious Sheikas, desperate auctioneers and unscrupulous dealers, all scheming to get their hands on her painting - a lost eighteenth-century masterpiece called 'The Improbability of Love'. Delving into the painting's past, Annie will uncover not just an illustrious list of former owners, but some of the darkest secrets of European history – and in doing so she might just learn to open up to the possibility of falling in love again.
The Improbability of Othello: Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood
by Joel B. AltmanShakespeare’s dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability—what they and others might be persuaded to believe—governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare’s theater. Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, Altman investigates Shakespeare’s representation of the self as a specific realization of tensions pervading the rhetorical culture in which he was educated and practiced his craft. In Altman’s account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences’ probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the skeptical critic and dramaturgic trickster. A monumental work of scholarship by one of America’s most respected scholars of Renaissance literature, The Improbability of Othello contributes fresh ideas to our understanding of Shakespeare’s conception of the self, his shaping of audience response, and the relationship of actors to his texts.
The Improbability of Othello: Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood
by Joel B. AltmanShakespeare’s dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability—what they and others might be persuaded to believe—governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare’s theater. Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, Altman investigates Shakespeare’s representation of the self as a specific realization of tensions pervading the rhetorical culture in which he was educated and practiced his craft. In Altman’s account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences’ probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the skeptical critic and dramaturgic trickster. A monumental work of scholarship by one of America’s most respected scholars of Renaissance literature, The Improbability of Othello contributes fresh ideas to our understanding of Shakespeare’s conception of the self, his shaping of audience response, and the relationship of actors to his texts.
The Improbability of Othello: Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood
by Joel B. AltmanShakespeare’s dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability—what they and others might be persuaded to believe—governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare’s theater. Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, Altman investigates Shakespeare’s representation of the self as a specific realization of tensions pervading the rhetorical culture in which he was educated and practiced his craft. In Altman’s account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences’ probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the skeptical critic and dramaturgic trickster. A monumental work of scholarship by one of America’s most respected scholars of Renaissance literature, The Improbability of Othello contributes fresh ideas to our understanding of Shakespeare’s conception of the self, his shaping of audience response, and the relationship of actors to his texts.
The Improbability of Othello: Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood
by Joel B. AltmanShakespeare’s dramatis personae exist in a world of supposition, struggling to connect knowledge that cannot be had, judgments that must be made, and actions that need to be taken. For them, probability—what they and others might be persuaded to believe—governs human affairs, not certainty. Yet negotiating the space of probability is fraught with difficulty. Here, Joel B. Altman explores the problematics of probability and the psychology of persuasion in Renaissance rhetoric and Shakespeare’s theater. Focusing on the Tragedy of Othello, Altman investigates Shakespeare’s representation of the self as a specific realization of tensions pervading the rhetorical culture in which he was educated and practiced his craft. In Altman’s account, Shakespeare also restrains and energizes his audiences’ probabilizing capacities, alternately playing the skeptical critic and dramaturgic trickster. A monumental work of scholarship by one of America’s most respected scholars of Renaissance literature, The Improbability of Othello contributes fresh ideas to our understanding of Shakespeare’s conception of the self, his shaping of audience response, and the relationship of actors to his texts.
The Improbable Cat
by Allan AhlbergThe Burrell family could never have foreseen the consequences of adopting the tiny stray kitten that appeared when David was twelve. But the sweet cat is not as harmless as it seems, and soon has them completely under its sinister spell. The only one unaffected, David concocts a plan to rescue his family - but will it work?
An Improbable Season (Unexpected Seasons)
by Rosalyn EvesFor fans of Bridgerton, An Improbable Season is a swoony Regency romance by Rosalyn Eves about three young women, their big dreams, and a London Season gone awry.When Thalia, Kalliope, and Charis set off to Regency London for their first Season, they each have clear goals — few of which include matrimony. Thalia means to make her mark among the intelligentsia and publish her poetry, Charis hopes to earn her place among the scientific elite, and Kalliope aims to take the fashionable ton by storm. But this Season, it doesn't take long for things to fall apart. . .Kalli finds herself embroiled in scandal and reliant upon an arranged marriage to redeem her reputation, Thalia's dreams of publication are threatened by her attraction to a charming rake, and Charis finds herself an unexpected social hit – and the source of a family scandal that her heart might not survive. Can this roller-coaster Season find its happily ever after?'If you’re looking for your next Bridgerton-esque fix, it’s all too probable you’ll find An Improbable Season as utterly charming as I did.' – Jennieke Cohen, author of My Fine Fellow
Impromptu in Moribundia
by Patrick Hamilton'I recommend Hamilton at every opportunity, because he was such a wonderful writer and yet is rather under-read today. All his novels are terrific' Sarah Waters'If you were looking to fly from Dickens to Martin Amis with just one overnight stop, then Hamilton is your man' Nick HornbyImpromptu in Moribundia is a satirical fable about one (nameless) man's trespass (through a fantastical machine called the 'Asteradio') into a parallel universe on a far-off planet where the 'miserably dull affairs of England' are mirrored and transformed into an apparent idyll of bourgeois English imagination.Moribundia is the 'physical enactment of the stereotypes and myths of English middle-class culture and consciousness.' Yet the narrator comes to discover that he has stumbled among a people characterised by 'cupidity, ignorance, complacence, meanness, ugliness, short-sightedness, cowardice, credulity, hysteria and, when the occasion called for it . . . cruelty and blood-thirstiness.
An Improper Affair (Mills And Boon Desire Ser. #1803)
by Anna DePaloBusiness mogal Ryan Sperling prided himself on being different from his old man, a self-centered philanderer who had let the family assets dwindle.
An Improper Aristocrat: Scandalous Lord, Rebellious Miss / An Improper Aristocrat (Mills And Boon Historical Ser.)
by Deb MarloweRapscallion! Rake! Wanderer! Adventurer! All accusations that the Earl of Treyford acknowledges with pride. The scandalous son of a disgraced mother, he has no time for the pretty niceties of the ton, nor the simpering debutantes who populate its ballrooms. He has returned to England to aid an "aging" spinster facing an undefined danger.
An Improper Arrangement: A Gentleman 'til Midnight / The Trouble With Honor / An Improper Arrangement / A Wedding By Dawn / The Devil Takes A Bride / A Promise By Daylight (The Little Season #1)
by Kasey MichaelsThe Dashing Duke-to-be and the Daring Debutante
An Improper Companion (Mills And Boon Historical Ser. #227)
by Anne HerriesDaniel, Earl of Cavendish, finds the frivolity of the ton dull after the adventures and hardship of the Peninsular War.
An Improper Duchess
by Amanda McCabeScotland, 1540 Katrina McLeod fled an arranged marriage, decreed by King James of Scotland, to a man with a fearful reputation, only to find herself on trial for her life! Accused of witchcraft, her salvation lies in the hands of brooding nobleman Duncan Rothmore….
The 'Improper' Feminine: The Women's Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing
by Lyn PykettThe women's sensation novel of the 1860s and the New Woman fiction of the 1890s were two major examples of a perceived feminine invasion of fiction which caused a critical furore in their day. Both genres, with their shocking, `fast' heroines, fired the popular imagination by putting female sexuality on the literary agenda and undermining the `proper feminine' ideal to which nineteenth-century women and fictional heroines were supposed to aspire. By exploring in impressive depth and breadth the material and discursive conditions in which these novels were produced, The `Improper' Feminine draws attention to key gendered interrelationships within the literary and wider cultures of the mid-Victorian and fin-de-diècle periods.
The 'Improper' Feminine: The Women's Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing
by Lyn PykettThe women's sensation novel of the 1860s and the New Woman fiction of the 1890s were two major examples of a perceived feminine invasion of fiction which caused a critical furore in their day. Both genres, with their shocking, `fast' heroines, fired the popular imagination by putting female sexuality on the literary agenda and undermining the `proper feminine' ideal to which nineteenth-century women and fictional heroines were supposed to aspire. By exploring in impressive depth and breadth the material and discursive conditions in which these novels were produced, The `Improper' Feminine draws attention to key gendered interrelationships within the literary and wider cultures of the mid-Victorian and fin-de-diècle periods.
Improper Miss Darling (Mills And Boon Historical Ser.)
by Gail WhitikerA HIGHLY UNSUITABLE MATCH When Alexander, Viscount Stewart, arrives on Emma Darling’s doorstep, protesting his brother’s engagement to her younger sister, she’s furious! Emma cares not a jot that Alex is the heir to an earldom and she’s a society unknown – how dares this high-handed gentleman meddle in her family’s private affairs?
Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes's Bewildering Corpus
by Daniela CaselliIn her compelling reexamination of Djuna Barnes's work, Daniela Caselli raises timely questions about Barnes, biography and feminist criticism, identity and authority, and modernist canon formation. Through close readings of Barnes's manuscripts, correspondence, critically acclaimed and little-known texts, Caselli tackles one of the central unacknowledged issues in Barnes: intertextuality. She shows how throughout Barnes's corpus the repetition of texts, by other authors (from Blake to Middleton) and by Barnes herself, forces us to rethink the relationship between authority and gender and the reasons for her marginal place within modernism. All her texts, linked as they are by correspondences and permutations, wage a war against the common sense of the straight mind. Caselli begins by analyzing how literary criticism has shaped our perceptions of Barnes, showing how the various personae assigned to Barnes are challenged when the right questions are posed: Why is Barnes such a famous author when many of her texts remain unread, even by critics? Why has criticism reduced Barnes's work to biographical speculations? How can Barnes's hybrid, eccentric, and unconventional corpus be read as part of literary modernism when it often seems to sever itself from it? How can an oeuvre reject the labels of feminist and lesbian literature, whilst nevertheless holding at its centre the relationships between language, sexuality, and the real? How can Barnes's work help us to rethink the relation between simplicity and difficulty within literary modernism? Caselli concludes by arguing that Barnes's complex and bewildering work is committed to a high modernist notion of art as a supremely difficult undertaking whilst refusing to conform to standards of modernist acceptability.
Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes's Bewildering Corpus
by Daniela CaselliIn her compelling reexamination of Djuna Barnes's work, Daniela Caselli raises timely questions about Barnes, biography and feminist criticism, identity and authority, and modernist canon formation. Through close readings of Barnes's manuscripts, correspondence, critically acclaimed and little-known texts, Caselli tackles one of the central unacknowledged issues in Barnes: intertextuality. She shows how throughout Barnes's corpus the repetition of texts, by other authors (from Blake to Middleton) and by Barnes herself, forces us to rethink the relationship between authority and gender and the reasons for her marginal place within modernism. All her texts, linked as they are by correspondences and permutations, wage a war against the common sense of the straight mind. Caselli begins by analyzing how literary criticism has shaped our perceptions of Barnes, showing how the various personae assigned to Barnes are challenged when the right questions are posed: Why is Barnes such a famous author when many of her texts remain unread, even by critics? Why has criticism reduced Barnes's work to biographical speculations? How can Barnes's hybrid, eccentric, and unconventional corpus be read as part of literary modernism when it often seems to sever itself from it? How can an oeuvre reject the labels of feminist and lesbian literature, whilst nevertheless holding at its centre the relationships between language, sexuality, and the real? How can Barnes's work help us to rethink the relation between simplicity and difficulty within literary modernism? Caselli concludes by arguing that Barnes's complex and bewildering work is committed to a high modernist notion of art as a supremely difficult undertaking whilst refusing to conform to standards of modernist acceptability.
Improper Relations
by Janet MullanyCompromising liaisons, crossed wires and conflicting loyalties - it's another gem from Regency star Janet Mullany. After losing best friend and distant cousin Ann Weller in marriage to the Earl of Beresford, sharp-witted Charlotte Hayden feels inclined to be even ruder than usual to potential suitors. But after a compromising liaison with Beresford's wicked, wayward cousin, Shad, she's suddenly propelled into a reluctant marriage, and finds herself missing Ann more than ever. But when Ann returns from her honeymoon, she drops a bombshell - not only is she not sure she loves Beresford, she's also had a child out of wedlock, and is planning to betray her husband with her former lover. Charlotte's realisation that she's falling in love with Shad only serves to make her dilemma even worse: should she keep Ann's secret, or tell her husband the truth?
The Improperly Pregnant Princess (Mills And Boon American Romance Ser.)
by Jacqueline DiamondScandal Rocks Fairy-Tale Family
Improperly Wed: Marriage With Benefits / Improperly Wed / A Breathless Bride (Mills And Boon Desire Ser.)
by Anna DePaloBe swept away by passion… with intense drama and compelling plots, these emotionally powerful reads will keep you captivated from beginning to end. Responsible Belinda Wentworth has always been a dutiful society daughter.
The Improv Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Improvising in Comedy, Theatre, and Beyond (Modern Plays)
by Tom Salinsky Deborah Frances-WhiteThe most comprehensive, smart, helpful and inspiring guide to improve available today. Applicable to comedians, actors, public speakers and anyone who needs to think on their toes.From The Improv Handbook: The problem for improvisers is anxiety. faced with a lot of nameless eyes staring at us, and feeling more than anything else like prey, we are likely to want to display very consistent behavior, so that anyone who looks at us, looks away and then looks back sees the same thing. Thus we become boring, we fade into the background, and we cease to be of interest. The Improv Handbook provides everything someone interested in improvisational comedy needs to know, as written by a husband and wife comedy duo with years of experience and teaching in the field. in addition to providing a comprehensive history of improvisational theater as a backdrop, it also looks at modern theories and practices of improvisation on a global scale, including how the form of comedy has evolved differently in different parts of the world, from Europe to the UK to the Chicago scene. The Improv Handbook also contains an essential performance segment that details different formats of improvisation. Chapter topics include Theatresports, Micetro, Gorilla Theatre, and the inventions of Keith Johnstone and Del Close as well as other popular forms of improv, like those on "Whose Line is it Anyway." The core section of the book is called simply, "How to Improvise" and delves into issues of spontaneity, the fundamentals of storytelling, working together, upping the ante, and character development. The book concludes with sections on how to improvise in front of an audience and- just as crucially- how to attract an audience in the first place.
Improvement: A Novel
by Joan Silber'Improvement is a major work of literature.' - Nick Hornby, The BelieverReyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn't perfect, yet as she visits him throughout his three-month stint in prison, their bond grows tighter. Kiki, now settled in New York after a journey that took her to Turkey and around the world, admires her niece's spirit but worries that she always picks the wrong man. Little does she know that the otherwise honourable Boyd is pulling Reyna into a scheme which violates his probation. When Reyna ultimately decides to remove herself for the sake of her four-year-old child, her small act of resistance sets into motion a tapestry of events that affect the lives of loved ones and strangers around them. A novel that examines conviction, connection and the possibility of generosity in the face of loss, Improvement is as intricately woven together as Kiki's beloved Turkish rugs and as colourful as the tattoos decorating Reyna's body, with narrative twists and turns as surprising and unexpected as the lives all around us. The Boston Globe says of Joan Silber 'No other writer can make a few small decisions ripple across the globe, and across time, with more subtlety and power.' Improvement is Silber's most shining achievement yet.
Improvement and Romance: Constructing the Myth of the Highlands (Language, Discourse, Society)
by Peter WomackAn attempt to trace the origins of the romantic image of the Highlands, by examining the economic, military and ideological circumstances of the region's subjugation by the British state. It combines literary criticism and cultural history to produce a case study of the making of the myth.
The Improvement of the Estate: A Study of Jane Austen's Novels
by Alistair M. DuckworthOriginally published in 1994. In The Improvement of the Estate, Alistair Duckworth contends that understanding Mansfield Park is fundamental to appreciating Jane Austen's body of work. Professor Duckworth understands Mansfield Park as underscoring the central uniting theme in Austen's work—her concept of the "estate" and its "improvement." The author illustrates Austen's connection to the values of Christian humanism, which she conveys through the uniting theme of estate improvement. According to Duckworth, the estate represents moral and social heritage, so the manner in which individuals seek to improve their estates in Jane Austen's novels represents the direction in which she saw the state and society moving. Finally, Duckworth underscores Austen's awareness of the importance of a society of individuals whose behavior is socially informed.