From Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad was first published in 1967. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

David Daisches, Douglas Bush, Robert B. Heilman, Arthur Mizener, and William Van O'Connor are among the contributors to this volume of essays on the nineteenth-century British novel. Each of the selections has been written expressly for this book and is published here for the first time.

There are a total of 20 essays, each by a different contributor. In addition, Rathburn, in an introductory essay, relates the nineteenth-century novel to that of the eighteenth century and Steinmann, in the concluding essay, discusses the nineteenth-century novel in relation to that of the present century.

The contributors, in addition to the two editors of the volume, and the novelists they discuss are the following: Charles Murrah, Jane Austen; Alan D Mckillop, Jane Austen; David Dasches, Walter Scott; Curtis Dahl, Edward Bulwer-Lytton; J. Y T. Greig, William Makepeace Thackeray; Douglas Bush, Charles Dickens; George H. Ford, Dickens; Melvin; R. Watson, the Brontes; Robert B. Heilman, Charlotte Bronte; Yvonne French, Elizabeth Gaskell; Bradford A. Booth, Anthony Trollope; Arthur Mizener, Anthony Trollope; Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot; Sumner J. Ferris, George Eliot; Wayne Burns, Charles Reade; Fabian Gudas, George Meredith; John Holloway, Thomas Hardy; Jacob Korg, George Gissing; William Van O'Connor, Samuel Burlter; W. Y. Tindall, Joseph Conrad. Although each essay is focused on a single novel or on one aspect of the novelist, all of them are written to give the reader sense of the novelist's whole achievement.

Cinema has been undergoing a profound technological shift: celluloid film is being replaced by digital media in the production, distribution, and reception of moving images. Concerned with the debate surrounding digital cinema’s ontology and the interrelationship between cinema cultures, From Light to Byte investigates the very idea of change as it is expressed in the current technological transition. Markos Hadjioannou asks what is different in the way digital movies depict the world and engage with the individual and how we might best address the issue of technological shift within media archaeologies.

Hadjioannou turns to the technical basis of the image as his first point of departure, considering the creative and perceptual activities of moviemakers and viewers. Grounded in film history, film theory, and philosophy, he explores how the digital configures its engagement with reality and the individual while simultaneously replaying and destabilizing celluloid’s own structures. He observes that, where film’s photographic foundation encourages an existential association between individual and reality, digital representations are graphic renditions of mathematical codes whose causal relations are more difficult to trace.

Throughout this work Hadjioannou examines how the two technologies set themselves up with reference to reality, physicality, spatiality, and temporality, and he concludes that the question concerning digital cinema is ultimately one of ethical implications—a question, that is, of the individual’s ability to respond to the image of the world.

From Pushkin to Tolstoy was first published in 1944. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.These selections, showing a wide variety of style, will acquaint advanced students of the Russian language with characteristics of the language used by some of the leading representatives of nineteenth-century Russian literature. All of these selections are either complete or can be understood or identified easily. Because the editor believes the student of Russian should try to become accustomed to the Russian accentuation and the use of larger dictionaries, word accents and a special glossary have not been given.

From Topic to Tale was first published in 1987. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance has been discussed since the 1940s as a shift from a Latinate culture to one based on a vernacular language, and, since the 1960s, as a shift from orality to literacy. From Topic to Tale focuses on this multifaceted transition, but it poses the problem in different terms: it shows how a rhetorical tradition was transformed into a textual one, and ends ultimately in a discussion of the relationship between discourse and society.

The rise of French vernacular literacy in the twelfth century coincided with the emergence of logic as a powerful instrument of the human mind. With logic come a new concern for narrative coherence and form, a concern exemplified by the work of Chretien de Troyes. Many brilliant poetic achievements crystallized in the narrative art of Chretien, establishing an enduring tradition of literary technique for all of Europe. Eugene Vance explores the intellectual context of Chretien's vernacular literacy, and in particular, the interaction between the three "arts of language" (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) compromising the trivium. Until Vance, few critics have studied the contribution of logic to Chretiens poetics, nor have they assessed the ethical bond between rationalism and the new heroic code of romance.

Vance takes Chretien de Troyes' great romance, Yvain ou le chevalier au lion,as the centerpiece of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. It is also central to his own thesis, which shows how Chretien forged a bold new vision of humans as social beings situated between beasts and angels and promulgated the symbolic powers of language, money, and heraldic art to regulate the effects of human desire. Vance's reading of the Yvain contributes not only to the intellectual history of the Middle Ages, but also to the continuing dialogue between contemporary critical theory and medieval culture.

Eugene Vance is professor of French and comparative literature at Emory University and principal editor of a University of Nebraska series, Regents Studies in Medieval Culture. Wlad Godzich is director of the Center for Humanistic Studies at the University of Minnesota and co-editor of the series Theory and History of Literature.

"I read Peter Y. Paik’s lucid, graceful, ruthless book in one single astonished sitting. I scarred it all over with arrows and exclamation points, so I can read it again as soon as possible." —Bruce Sterling

 

Revolutionary narratives in recent science fiction graphic novels and films compel audiences to reflect on the politics and societal ills of the day. Through character and story, science fiction brings theory to life, giving shape to the motivations behind the action as well as to the consequences they produce.

 

In From Utopia to Apocalypse, Peter Y. Paik shows how science fiction generates intriguing and profound insights into politics. He reveals that the fantasy of putting annihilating omnipotence to beneficial effect underlies the revolutionary projects that have defined the collective upheavals of the modern age. Paik traces how this political theology is expressed, and indeed literalized, in popular superhero fiction, examining works including Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s graphic novel Watchmen, the science fiction cinema of Jang Joon-Hwan, the manga of Hayao Miyazaki, Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, and the Matrix trilogy. Superhero fantasies are usually seen as compensations for individual feelings of weakness, victimization, and vulnerability. But Paik presents these fantasies as social constructions concerned with questions of political will and the disintegration of democracy rather than with the psychology of the personal.

 

What is urgently at stake, Paik argues, is a critique of the limitations and deadlocks of the political imagination. The utopias dreamed of by totalitarianism, which must be imposed through torture, oppression, and mass imprisonment, nevertheless persist in liberal political systems. With this reality looming throughout, Paik demonstrates the uneasy juxtaposition of saintliness and cynically manipulative realpolitik, of torture and the assertion of human dignity, of cruelty and benevolence.

Frontiers in Comparative Medicine was first published in 1972.In this initial volume of the series to be based on the Wesley W. Spink Lectures on Comparative Medicine, Dr. Beveridge, the noted British scientist, discusses the contributions to human medicine resulting from studies of disease in animals. The book serves as an excellent introduction to this important aspect of science, suitable for general readers as well as for those studying or working in the medical, biological, or social sciences.Dr. Beveridge examines the methodology of comparative science and tells of the remarkable series of key discoveries of disease agents which have emerged from research on animals. He explains the reasons for the success of animal studies in connection with human disease and makes a strong case for more research on naturally occurring animal models.The author describes current comparative studies in cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neuropathology, immunopathology, congenial defects, metal health, reproduction, and population regulation. He shows that in each of these subjects results that have far-reaching implications for human welfare and medicine are being obtained. In the final section he assembles the available evidence about the origin of human influenza pandemics. He points to a conclusion that they probably result from a hybridization of human and animal strains of the disease agent and that the usual place where this occurs appears to be the plains of Central Asia. He emphasizes the need for an international investigation of the problem of influenza, in the hope of preventing these pandemics.

The functional dialectic system approach to therapy has been widely embraced and is now used internationally, with individuals and couples as well as with families. It differs substantially from the common psychotherapeutic models that have prevailed in the West for more than a century. According to the system model, an individual who is in treatment is not considered to be the primary focus of interest but is seen instead as part of a social context, the network of relationships that play significant roles in his or her life.

In this book, Moshe Almagor offers a comprehensive view of the contemporary system approach—from theory to practice—and shows how it can be applied to a variety of psychological problems and in a variety of therapeutic modes. The system approach to therapy concentrates on the present situation of a client, aware that people are always in transition yet seeking order, safety, belonging, and identity. Their behavior is thus goal oriented and functional. The principles of dialectics assert that everything includes its opposite, that there is an ongoing conflict between the poles, and that this inevitable conflict creates pressure that leads to a continuous alteration.

These principles, thoroughly explained in the book and practically illustrated by case examples drawn from the author’s own practice, show how the system approach is optimistic in its orientation and is designed to help clients change their lives by broadening their understanding of themselves, their situations, and their options.

Fundamentals of World Organization was first published in 1950. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

This book offers fresh insight into the possibility of one peaceful world. It stresses pragmatic realities; it does not rest on formulation of the ideal.

Anti-democratic forces can be prevented from controlling the future course of world events only if plans are made now for a realistic world organization. The plans must be based on recognition and knowledge of all the problems involved.

Dr. Levi's approach to the broad subject of world organization is analytical, in contrast to most previous studies, which have been historical or descriptive.

With the calm, dispassionate viewpoint of a social scientist, the author upsets such common fallacies as the belief that world tension is caused primarily by clashes of ideologies or that world public opinion is effective in shaping the foreign policies of nations.

The Future of an Illusion was first published in 1989. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The Future of an Illusion documents the pivotal role Constance Penley has played in the development of feminist film theory. Penley analyzes the primary movements that have shaped the field: the conjunction of feminism, film theory, and psychoanalysis, and the inherent debates surrounding the politics of women and representation. These debates center on the position of women in the classical Hollywood narrative, the construction of the spectator's desire in pornography and eroticism, and the implicitly male bias in psychoanalytically oriented film theory. Essential to anyone studying the sexual policies of representation, The Future of an Illusion ranges from avant-garde films to video, popular cinema, television, literature, and critical and cultural theory.

Constance Penley is associate professor of English and film studies at the University of Rochester. A co-editor of the journal Camera Obscura,she is the editor of Feminism and Film Theory.