The Return of the Shadow: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part One (The History of Middle-Earth, Vol. 6)

Book Description

In this sixth volume of The History of Middle-earth the story reaches The Lord of the Rings. In The Return of the Shadow (an abandoned title for the first volume) Christopher Tolkien describes, with full citation of the earliest notes, outline plans, and narrative drafts, the intricate evolution of The Fellowship of the Ring and the gradual emergence of the conceptions that transformed what J.R.R. Tolkien for long believed would be a far shorter book, 'a sequel to The Hobbit'. The enlargement of Bilbo's 'magic ring' into the supremely potent and dangerous Ruling Ring of the Dark Lord is traced and the precise moment is seen when, in an astonishing and unforeseen leap in the earliest narrative, a Black Rider first rode into the Shire, his significance still unknown. The character of the hobbit called Trotter (afterwards Strider or Aragorn) is developed while his indentity remains an absolute puzzle, and the suspicion only very slowly becomes certainty that he must after all be a Man. The hobbits, Frodo's companions, undergo intricate permutations of name and personality, and other major figures appear in strange modes: a sinister Treebeard, in league with the Enemy, a ferocious and malevolent Farmer Maggot.

The story in this book ends at the point where J.R.R. Tolkien halted in the story for a long time, as the Company of the Ring, still lacking Legolas and Gimli, stood before the tomb of Balin in the Mines of Moria. The Return of the Shadow is illustrated with reproductions of the first maps and notable pages from the earliest manuscripts.

Customer Reviews:

Great Look behind the scenes. Far better than earlier volumes.......2007-02-20

`The Return of the Shadow' is the first of a four volume series (`The History of the Lord of the Rings') within a series, (volume VI of `The History of Middle Earth') edited by Christopher Tolkien, from the unpublished writings of his father, J. R. R. Tolkien, most famous as the author of `The Hobbit' and `The Lord of the Rings'.

For those who have been slogging through the previous three volumes dealing with fragments from the composition of `The Silmarillion', this volume is a great pleasure, as it deals entirely with early drafts of what becomes the first two-thirds of `The Fellowship of the Ring' (FR), the first volume of the great `The Lord of the Rings' (LotR). It begins at the beginning of FR and ends as the fellowship stand in the mines of Moria over the grave marked `Balin Son of Burin, Lord of Moria' (The dramatic encounter between Gandalf and the Balrog will have to wait until the next volume).

For those of you who may have read `The Lord of the Rings' only once or twice, this and the next three volumes in this series are an enormous treat, as reading this is far more rewarding than a second or third reading of LotR, and will make that second or third reading even more interesting. For those of us who have read LotR for ten or twelve times, and have seen Peter Jackson's films of same more times than I care to count, the interest tends to wane just a bit, as the percentage of entirely new material is small compared to early versions of text which appeared in the final volumes.

What I really looked forward to in these volumes was some insight into my second most favorite character, after Gandalf, and this would be the perpetual Middle Earth hippie, Tom Bombadil and his consort, Goldberry. Unfortunately, this book does not through a lot of light on Bombadil's origins. Thankfully, it also does not violate any of my lengthily speculations on where Bombadil fits into the history of Middle Earth and the cosmology of the world in which Middle Earth is set. The heart of the matter is that Bombadil is one of the very few true natives of Middle Earth. The elves are clearly immigrants from the Far West. Dwarves and men seem to be creations of the Valar, and orcs and trolls are perversions of elves, men, and dwarves made by Melkor or Sauron. He is certainly not one of the Valar, as nothing said about his lack of interest in The Ring would be true of a Valar. Similarly, he is certainly not a wizard, one of Gandalf's clan, the Istari. The fact is, Tolkien senior simply added him in as a `deux ex machina', pinch hitting for Gandalf in a way, to get the wandering hobbits out of two jams with powers far greater than their own, so that they can safely reach Bree and the assistance of Strider. And, it turns out Tolkien simply wanted to include Bombadil and Goldberry since he had written of them in earlier publications!

One thing that does come out is the fact that the minor character, Farmer Maggot is potentially a far more interesting character than may appear on the surface. For example, Tom Bombadil seems to get most of his information about the outside world from Farmer Maggot and there is a suspicion in this narrative that Maggot is not entirely `hobbit' bred. This is not too unusual, as there has always been a suspicion that the three strains of hobbits are a result of a bit on interbreeding with elves and dwarves (but you didn't hear that from me!). One thing about Maggot which tickles my fancy is that his physical description here is a strong image of the Pennsylvania Amish and Mennonite farmers, which fits perfectly into the land around the Brandywine and the cultivation of mushrooms, both features of southeastern Pennsylvania, the home of the very same Pennsylvania Dutch. And yet, editor Christopher seems to make no mention of this obvious connection.

Being a true fanatic, even little things about these books will please me to no end. One thing, among others, which makes me think that Peter Jackson used these books in his writing the screenplay for the movies is the similarity between the picture of Bag End and the surrounding Shire and Bag End as it appeared in FR. I'm also thrilled by the additional original Tolkien maps, as well as the usually excellent index to the volume. I look forward to a composite index covering the whole four volumes of the `History of the Lord of the Rings' series.

The greatest impact of this volume comes from the smallest note in the beginning. After all the preparation done on the history of Middle Earth, Tolkien senior still had no notion of what he will find in Bree, who or what was Strider, or any notion of the design of Moria until he actually reached these characters and events in his writing.

I hate to give this only 4 stars, but too much repitition........2006-03-14

I was hoping that this would give like amny differnent versions of these books, but it tends just to show you the evolution and showing you the rewritings of early chapters of the lord and some of them like the council of elrond show you like 6 different versions. Every version a new character will show up, somebody will turn from good to evil, or maybe their words will be given to some one else.

I guess I was just hoping that this would be more like the previous 5 books and give us new stuff like they did of the silmarillion. But it did provide me with enough new info and some pretty exciting evolutions in this.

For Hard Core Tolkien Fans Only!!!.......2005-07-13

I got the book thinking it was part of Tolkien's unfinished sequel to the LOTR "The Return of the Shadow", but the shadow here is Sauron's return to middle earth after the end of the second age.

This is a volume in the previously unpublished letters and papers of J.R.R. Tolkien. In this volume we follow the evolution of the different parts of the LOTR the Fellowship of the Ring over time. From its beginning as a sequel to the Hobbit to the final epic product of mythic proportions.

Its interesting to see all the various drafts of the original chapters and the progression of Bingo Baggins into Frodo and the Hobbit Trotter into the Human King Strider/Aragorn. But this is the main drawback also, how many variations of "A Long Expected Party" can one read without being bored?

For Tolkien enthusiatists and English Majors only.

Vital exploration of Tolkien's work, but for fans only.......2004-05-09

If you're not a Tolkien fan, you need not apply to the sprawling History of Middle Earth series. But if you're interested in seeing how the Professor developed the rich creation of Middle Earth, warts and all, this is a treasure trove of material.

The 12 volumes of the History of Middle Earth take a close look at the creation of Tolkien's greatest achievement - Middle Earth itself - through early drafts, unpublished texts, and dead end writings. For ardent Tolkien readers it is a fascinating look at one of the great literary creations of the 20th Century. For more casual fans, it's text better left unread.

"The Return of the Shadow" marks the first in the four volumes dealing with the history of the writing of "The Lord of the Rings." Like the other volumes in the series, it features unpublished writings by Tolkien, supplemented, explained, footnoted, annotated and expounded upon by his son, Christopher Tolkien.

Here we have the earliest versions of what would later become the most beloved fantasy epic in the world, detailing the extraordinary and convoluted history of the earliest chapters of "The Lord of the Rings." Some readers might be surprised to know just how different a book this was in its earliest stages, and just how much Tolkien was making it up as he went along in those early days.

The wealth of information is fantastic, and Christopher Tolkien goes to great lengths to examine each text, putting them in the context of the larger puzzle of his father's writings. The exploration of how "The Lord of the Rings" came about is fantastic - for those interested. Otherwise, it will bore. This is, after all, a series of unfinished draft chapters and essays on the text. I enjoyed it, but many won't.

Anybody wishing to do a study of Tolkien's craft, into "behind the scenes" writings, or just interested in finding a few snatches of new Middle Earth material (even if in unfinished form, there are some scattered throughout the series) will certainly find what they are looking for here. Christopher Tolkien's work here is appreciated by scores of ardent Tolkien fans.

Those looking for fresh new tales about hobbits and heroes, however, will be disappointed. This isn't new fiction, nor does it even feature finished works. Seek elsewhere if you are looking for more tales in the way of "The Lord of the Rings."

Warning-not a novel....but a great resource.......2003-01-10

Of the thrilling and informative History of Middle-Earth series, this is perhaps the most interesting part. Normal Tolkien fans will get the rare chance to see how the germ of an idea can explode into the most complex cosmology ever created. Although it may seem boring, as it is not a novel per se, it is an insightful analysis of a very beloved book. The Lord of the Rings was initially conceived as a sequel to the Hobbit, growing into something incomparably more vast. We see Bingo in the character of Frodo, the name Frodo applied to another character. Aragorn is named Trotter and the idea emerges that he might be a long lost Hobbit who has had many experiences on the road. Somehow, with many footnotes and comments in the margin, we see the evolution of these ideas into what we know today as LOTR. Fascinating and useful for the Tolkien scholar, the devoted Tolkien reader, or even an aspiring writer.

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More Greater Romantic Lyrics
Wright's Mastery
Full of wonder shared with human frailty
compelling
the latest from the master

A Short History of the Shadow: Poems
Charles Wright
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0374263027

Book Description

Luminous new poems from the author of "The Appalachian Book of the Dead"

Landscape, as Wang Wei says, softens the sharp edges of isolation.
Don't just do something, sit there.
And so I have, so I have,
the seasons curling around me like smoke,
Gone to the end of the earth and back without a sound.
-"Body and Soul II"

This is Charles Wright's first collection of verse since the completion of his Appalachian Book of the Dead, the trilogy of trilogies hailed as one "among the great long poems of the century" (James Longenbach, Boston Review). Wright speaks in these poems with characteristic charm, restlessness, and wit, writing again and again, "I sit where I always sit," only to reveal himself in a new setting every time. In A Short History of the Shadow Wright's return to the landscapes of his early work finds his art resilient in a world haunted by death and the dead.

Customer Reviews:

More Greater Romantic Lyrics.......2004-11-27

At the beginning of this collection, Charles Wright or his persona looks around his study and wonders "where to begin again?" Well he might ask. In his previous three books Wright compiled one of the most comprehensive long sequences since the Cantos, a massive work he calls the Appalachian Book of the Dead, though it has not yet been published under that title. A Short History of the Shadow, retaining the casually associative open-ended structure of the three preceding collections, concentrates on short poems that may be described as modern pastoral elegy informed by the cross-genre imperative M. H. Abrams has called the "Greater Romantic Lyric," a freely associative first-person meditation rooted in a particularized setting. Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight" and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" epitomize the form; and Wright, their successor, is the most persistently Romantic of postmodern poets in his transcendentalism, courtship of the spirit of nature, and assertion of the primacy of imagination in the face of phenomena. He filters Coleridge through his love of ancient Chinese poetry, especially as recreated in the work of James Wright, giving his poetry a luxuriantly multicultural overtone. This new collection seems an extension of the material and methods of the Appalachian poems. It is not clear to me why it shouldn't form part of that sequence, since although its poems stand firmly on their own that's also true of those in Appalachia, Black Zodiac, and Chickamauga.

Wright's Mastery.......2003-07-27

This book isn't Wright's best, and pales a little after the volumes collected in Negative Blue. That it's still very, very good--perhaps the best book from any of the older generation SINCE Negative Blue--is a testament to Wright's power. I reccomend this book highly, but don't fail to read the rest of his books.

Full of wonder shared with human frailty.......2003-05-02

Chales Wright is an amazingly fine poet. How he is able to look and see things we fastscan everyday and in a mere few phrases turn that blink into quiet monument remains a wonder to all who read him. Read? No, luxuirate. Wright's strange friendship with death introduces us to dark rooms, hand held in his lighted clasp, and gives meaning to all the mysteries nature giggles about in the corner. He is able to pluck the most mundane of ideas and place them in a land of myth and history and encourages us to think? Yes. But also he encourages just to read his poems again and again..........along with the poems of others, he adds, smilingly. Continuingly recommended.

compelling.......2003-04-07

The sounds of this poetry are amazing. The music is unbound & sprawling. Wholly modern. Of all the Pulitzer Prize winners, Charles Wright is one of my favorites. This poetry is very idiosyncratic.

the latest from the master.......2002-05-23

"Every true poem is a spark,/and aspires to the condition of the original fire..." (from "Body and Soul II").

In this, Wright's fifteenth volume, the language--urgent and palpable--spills off the page like a shower of sparks. Not since Yeats has a master poet in our language seemed poised to enter such a rich and important later phase. Wright is unquestionably the top dog of our poetry, and in this book his fire shows no sign of dimming.

Personally I think that ths book (and fourteen others) are a must-read for anybody interested in what the English language is capable of.

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Shadows are the holes in light

Zupancic Strikes Back

Get into Nietzsche again for the first time

Untimely Meditation

The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche's Philosophy of the Two (Short Circuits)
Alenka Zupancic
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0262740265

Book Description

What is it that makes Nietzsche Nietzsche? In The Shortest Shadow, Alenka Zupancic counters the currently fashionable appropriation of Nietzsche as a philosopher who was "ahead of his time" but whose time has finally come -- the rather patronizing reduction of his often extraordinary statements to mere opinions that we can "share." Zupancic argues that the definitive Nietzschean quality is his very unfashionableness, his being out of the mainstream of his or any time.

To restore Nietzsche to a context in which the thought "lives on its own credit," Zupancic examines two aspects of his philosophy. First, in "Nietzsche as Metapsychologist," she revisits the principal Nietzschean themes -- his declaration of the death of God (which had a twofold meaning, "God is dead" and "Christianity survived the death of God"), the ascetic ideal, and nihilism -- as ideas that are very much present in our hedonist postmodern condition. Then, in the second part of the book, she considers Nietzsche's figure of the Noon and its consequences for his notion of the truth. Nietzsche describes the Noon not as the moment when all shadows disappear but as the moment of "the shortest shadow" -- not the unity of all things embraced by the sun, but the moment of splitting, when "one turns into two." Zupancic argues that this notion of the Two as the minimal and irreducible difference within the same animates all of Nietzsche's work, generating its permanent and inherent tension.

Customer Reviews:

Shadows are the holes in light.......2005-01-11

There are a few holes in this book that upon the reception of a little light might be considered, how might one say, augmented shadows of distortion... But the itch, like curiostity, can be its own reward.

Zupancic Strikes Back.......2004-10-01

Once again Zupancic shows the depth of her knowledge of Lacanian theory and philosophy in general. Not only does she move the reader in and through Lacanian theory vis-a-vis Nietzsche, but she also developes Lacanian concepts themselves. If you are expecting a long and sustained study of Nieztsche's entire body of work through the lens of Lacan, then, this is not the book for you. Rather, Zupancic focuses in on a couple of Nietzschean concepts in order to give them a new look. She also unfolds some of Alain Badiou's ideas--particularly, the Event--in relation to Nietzsche and Lacan (she also studies with Badiou in Paris), which is very informative. This book is short and sweet, and by using art and comedy to unfold the ideas it is also entertaining. For me, the highlight of this book is the appendix, which is a reprint of an article she wrote on love and comedy, which is helpful for understanding drive and desire in Lacan. Indeed, Zupancic is the next Lacanian superstar!

Get into Nietzsche again for the first time.......2004-04-18

This is an exciting study, that will be striking in its insights even to those who thought that they got Nietzsche long ago. What Zupancic's book brings out for me is the feeling of reading Nietzsche for the first time... while its not that her insights are shockingly new, its more that they seem shockingly not new at all, that she is alas bringing out the "real" Nietzschean insights that you maybe felt but never articulated. This book also makes nice use and comparison of the works of Weber, Lacan and Badiou among others, but in much more enlightening ways than a lot of other recent scholarship.
And its readable without having a PhD background in the stuff.

Untimely Meditation.......2004-02-16

Alenka Zupancic is a researcher at the Institute Of Philosophy in Ljubjana: Zizek's old stomping grounds, and there are some similarities in her work with his, particularly with her anti-postmodern Lacanianism. However, though her writing is less flashy than Zizek, her thinking is just as exhilarating. It's tough these days to approach Nietzsche's work freshly. He has been mined as much as any philosophical figure in recent memory. There doesn't seem much ore left in those shafts. but this book finds some valuable nuggets. "The Shortest Shadow" attempts to reconsider two aspesct of Nietzche's thought The Death of God and the idea of "noon" (the time when shadows are shortest). Zupancic is an excellent reader and gives us much to consider. She stays close to her texts; and though she can be a bit difficult at times, she neither loses her focus nor ceases to be provocative. It is a book that in many ways (though is scope is much more narrow) that is almost as suggestive as Deleuze's "Nietzsche and Philosophy" -- which is high praise indeed. It is a somwhat less satisfying work than "Ethics of the Real" but is it about half the length of her first book. Is is a good book nevertheless. However, it is not a good book for an introduction into Nietzsche's thought, for that try Kaufmann's "Nietzsche: Philosophy, Psychologist, Antichrist" or Safranski "Nietzsche: A Critical Biography". Or, as I always suggest, try the primary source -- Kaufmann's "Portable Nietzsche" or "Thus Spake Zarathustra" are excellent entry points into the work of one of the greatest thinkers in philosophy.

In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing

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In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing
Chris Baldick
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Frankenstein (Dover Thrift Editions)

ASIN: 0198122497

Book Description

This book surveys the early history of one of our most important modern myths: the story of Frankenstein and the monster he created from dismembered corpses, as it appeared in fictional and other writings before its translation to the cinema screen. It examines the range of meanings which Mary Shelley's Frankenstein offers in the light of the political images of `monstrosity' generated by the French Revolution. Later chapters trace the myth's analogues and protean transformations in subsequent writings, from the tales of Hoffmann and Hawthorne to the novels of Dickens, Melville, Conrad, and Lawrence, taking in the historical and political writings of Carlyle and Marx as well as the science fiction of Stevenson and Wells. The author shows that while the myth did come to be applied metaphorically to technological development, its most powerful associations have centred on relationships between people, in the family, in work, and in politics.

Short History of the Shadow (Reaktion Books - Essays in Art and Culture)

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Short History of the Shadow (Reaktion Books - Essays in Art and Culture)
Victor I. Stoichita
Manufacturer: Reaktion Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1861890001

Book Description

Stoichita's compelling account untangles the history of one of the most enduring challenges to beset Western art - the depiction and meanings of shadows.

"discriminating, inspired interrogation ... dazzling analysis"—Marina Warner, Tate Magazine

"Ambitious and a pleasure to read ... a thoroughly worthwhile book."—Times Higher Education Supplement

Shadows of Blue & Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce

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short stories
Chilling to the bone!
LEST WE FORGET, OR BE SWAYED BY THE HISTORY BOOKSý

Shadows of Blue & Gray: The Civil War Writings of Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
Manufacturer: Forge Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0765302446

Book Description

Ambrose Bierce didn't just write about the Civil War, he lived through it--on the battlefields and over the graves--and in doing so gave birth to a literary chronicle of men at war previously unseen in the American literary canon. The fact that some of these stories verged on the supernatural, others on factual reporting, and others on the fine line between humor and morbidity in no way detracts from their resonance to both the history of the war between the states and the imaginative historical literature in the tradition of Washington Irving.

Shadows of Blue & Gray collects all of Bierce's Civil War stories (twenty-seven in total) with six of his memoir pieces on his own experiences on the front lines.

This collection includes such classics as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," "A Horseman in the Sky," "Parker Addison, Philosopher", and "A Bivouac of the Dead"; as well as lesser known stories and sketches such as "The Mockingbird" and "Two Military Executions" and memoirs of his experiences at Shiloh, Chickamauga, and Franklin.

Customer Reviews:

short stories.......2007-03-28

A very good way to get a look at the civil war through short stories. Should be mandatory reading in every high school in the nation.

Chilling to the bone!.......2006-05-14

Ambrose Bierce participated in many of the great Civil War battles. While I realise this book is written as fiction I would submit to the reader that it is fact. Ambrose has this gifted way of speach that brings to life the horrors he witness. You will shiver with goose bumps! You won't sleep with the lights out after reading his stories. No way!
I could not put this chilling book down. It was as if it was possess! Ambrose disappeared in 1914 a old man who walked into Mexico. Maybe he is still walking and telling these stories. I would like to think so.

LEST WE FORGET, OR BE SWAYED BY THE HISTORY BOOKSý.......2003-05-06

It's easy to look back and view wars as things of glory - the history books tend to lead us in that direction by viewing the action from lofty heights, speaking in terms of armies and strategies and generals. The reality - as those who have `been there' know too well (and no, I'm not claiming to be a veteran) - is that the old adage is all too true: war is definitely hell, and we should never, ever forget that fact.

Ambrose Bierce is known today mainly through his fiction - many fine examples of which appear in this collection - and through THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY. He `might or might not' be the subject and/or inspiration for Carlos Fuentes' novel THE OLD GRINGO, also made into a film. His stories have a decidedly `creepy' feel to them - he was no Edgar Allan Poe, perhaps, but he was a talented writer nonetheless...and as not only the short stories, but also the non-fiction pieces collected here demonstrate, he was a careful and articulate observer. We are truly blessed that he chose to recount what he had seen, both in the form of short stories and memoirs. His disappearance in 1914 in Mexico has added to his mystique over the ensuing years.

The most famous of the short stories contained in this volume is undoubtedly `An occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'. I remember reading it in high school (NO, I won't say how long ago that was...) - and it was filmed to great effect by director Roberto Enrico in 1962, and was subsequently aired in the US as an episode in the last season of THE TWILGHT ZONE on CBS. It won an Oscar in 1964 as Best Foreign Short Film. The story is a masterpiece of suspense - it's a great literary epitaph for Bierce.

Bierce served in the Civil War - he enlisted at its outset and saw quite a bit of action. He rose through the ranks to lieutenant and served on the staff of various high-ranking officers. It is his observations and experiences - and his empathy with the troops, the enlisted men, the common man - that lend such a value to his writings. Too much `Hollywood-izing' has been forced upon the truth - about the Civil War and almost everything the film industry touches. It's a treasure to have the pieces here to vividly remind us of what the experience was really like.

There is humor here as well - Bierce's wit was an acerbic sword, and he unsheathed it on the high and low alike, without sparing himself in the process. His characterizations of the generals under whom he served, as well as the enlisted soldiers, the post-war opportunists, and the intellectual crowd with whom he mingled both in the US and abroad, are rich indeed.

Book Description

It was a war that tore America apart. When it ended, more than fifty-eight thousand of our young men and women were dead, killed defending a country most people had never known existed.

Years later, this nation still bears the scars of that terrible war, but the men and women who fought to uphold traditional American ideals have not been forgotten. In 1982 the Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated to those who gave their lives in the defense of freedom. The black marble wall, inscribed with the names of every serviceman and woman who died in Vietnam, is our most poignant reminder of the sacrifice made by the 1.2 million veterans of that war, a sacrifice that the survivors still live with to this day.

In the Shadow of the Wall is an all-original anthology of fictional stories by some of the best writers of the Vietnam generation. In many instances, these are the same people who experienced firsthand the surreal experience that was Vietnam, both there and at home. The authors and stories included are: “50 WPM” by Orson Scott Card • “What's in a Name” by Michael Belfiore • “Blood Bone Tendon Stone” by Michael Brotherton • “Obsessions” by Leah R. Cutter • “Names in Marble” by Joe Haldeman • “Willing the Child to Return” by David Lange • “The Pilots” by L. E. Modesitt • “Reflections in Black Granite” by Mike Resnick and Michael A. Burstein • “Black Reflections” by Robert J. Sawyer • “The Angel of the Wall” by Byron R. Tetrick

Andy Duncan, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, and Michael Swanwick have also written stories for this thoughtful and thought-provoking collection. FICTION 6” X 9”, 320 PAGES PAPERBACK

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Psychoanalysis and Cinema: The Play of Shadows (Short Cuts)
Vicky Lebeau
Manufacturer: Wallflower Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1903364191

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Lebeau examines the long and uneven history of developments in modern art, science, and technology that brought pychoanalysis and the cinema together towards the end of the nineteenth century. She explores the subsequent encounters between the two: the seductions of psychoanalysis and cinema as converging, though distinct, ways of talking about dream and desire, image and illusion, shock, and sexuality. Beginning with Freud's encounter with the spectacle of hysteria on display in fin-de-siècle Paris, this study offers a detailed reading of the texts and concepts which generated the field of psychoanalytic film theory.

Sally Y LA Sombra Del Norte / The Shadow in the North

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Entretenido y emotivo

Sally Y LA Sombra Del Norte / The Shadow in the North
Philip Pullman
Manufacturer: Ediciones Urano
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

En el Londres victoriano, las estrafalarias oficinas de Lockhart y Garland -socios, amigos y mucho más- bullen de frenética actividad. Mientras Jim Taylor, el aventurero, intenta ayudar a un asustado mago a desaparecer por un tiempo, Fred Garland, el fotógrafo, estudia la forma de captar en imágenes una fraudulenta sesión de espiritismo.

Pero la misión más difícil es sin duda la de Sally Lockhart, intrépida asesora financiera. Ella sola se enfrentará a un hombre que constituye una terrible amenaza para la humanidad.

Sally Lockhart, la sagaz protagonista de esta novela de aventuras que nos traslada a la Inglaterra del siglo XIX adivinará las intenciones de esta maléfica sombra del norte y conseguirá detener su avance. ¿Pero a qué precio?

Una emocionante novela de amor, amistad y aventura.

Customer Reviews:

Entretenido y emotivo.......2007-06-11

Lo que más me gusta de lo que escribe Philip Pullman es que logra condensar en sus relatos. Todo lo importante, todo lo interesante. Sus protagonistas son chicas, heroínas atractivas, fuertes e inteligentes que no dejan de ser chicas que se enamoran y necesitan de un compañero, de un igual. Los compañeros de estas chicas son masculinos viriles y al tiempo sensibles y muy complejos. Los malos, ¡son malos! No el malote que ríe a carcajadas con sus secuaces, no... son los malos con poder, que no creen que están haciendo ningún mal. Personajes que aborrecen al mundo y a las personas de tal modo que quieren "ayudar" cambiándolo radicalmente, y con radicalmente me refiero a realizar empresas realmente atroces e inhumanas. Además de los protagonistas cada uno de los personajes se presenta irremplazable, necesario, determinante y completo. Siempre hay una mascota o animal tan importante como un apersona.

En las historias de Pullman hay aventura, acción, misterio, horror, romance y drama, cada uno en su momento, cada momento auténticamente energizante, enervante o conmovedor. Es un escritor que no teme matar a sus personajes arrancándome con ello el llanto más profundo y sincero - y a veces lo odio por eso-. Pullman narra con muy alto nivel intelectual, no siente condescendencia por el lector, sus textos están llenos de guiños y referencias literarios y culturales.

Pullman revivió, para mi, el gusto y el placer por la narrativa "juvenil" de los clásicos como Stevenson, Dumas, Verne, Salgari...

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