The genre of prehistoric fiction contains a surprisingly large and diverse group of fictional works by American, British, and French writers from the late nineteenth century to the present that describe prehistoric humans. Nicholas Ruddick explains why prehistoric fiction could not come into being until after the acceptance of Charles Darwin's theories, and argues that many early prehistoric fiction works are still worth reading even though the science upon which they are based is now outdated. Exploring the history and evolution of the genre, Ruddick shows how prehistoric fiction can offer fascinating insights into the possible origins of human nature, sexuality, racial distinctions, language, religion, and art. The book includes discussions of well-known prehistoric fiction by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, J.-H. Rosny Aîné, Jack London, William Golding, Arthur C. Clarke, and Jean M. Auel and reminds us of some unjustly forgotten landmarks of prehistoric fiction. It also briefly covers such topics as the recent boom in prehistoric romance, notable prehistoric fiction for children and young adults, and the most entertaining movies featuring prehistoric humans. The book includes illustrations that trace the changing popular images of cave men and women over the past 150 years.

Robert Rebein argues that much literary fiction of the 1980s and 90s represents a triumphant, if tortured, return to questions about place and the individual that inspired the works of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Faulkner, and other giants of American literature. Concentrating on the realist bent and regional orientation in contemporary fiction, he discusses in detail the various names by which this fiction has been described, including literary postmodernism, minimalism, Hick Chic, Dirty Realism, ecofeminism, and more. Rebein's clearly written, nuanced interpretations of works by Raymond Carver, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Louise Erdrich, Dorothy Allison, Barbara Kingsolver, E. Annie Proulx, Chris Offut, and others, will appeal to a wide range of readers.

Venturing into the realm of the Armenian language, Lagarde here presents a preliminary glossary of the language. The main body of the book contains over 2400 lexical entries, most of which are brief, dense descriptions of the words. Following the glossary Lagarde provides a comparative chart to the Armenian words including material from Sanskrit, Bactrian or Old Persian, Neo-Persian, Greek, and Semitic. An essay on the history of the study of the language and indices round out this early work on the Armenian tongue. This book, written in German, holds an important place in the study of Armenian.

The introduction to the Arabic language by the renowned linguist Georg Freytag is fast becoming difficult to find. Written in German, this precise presentation is intended for a general readership which has no background in previous Semitic language study. The Arabic period covered for this historic grammar is that of Mohammed and later. In some ways an unconventional approach Freytag introduces topics such as Arabic names and the history of the Arabs, even prior to Mohammed’s time. An outline of the Arabic language and its dialects is presented. A period piece that retains its functionality, this introduction to Arabic is more than a grammar, it is a view into the life of the Arabian world.

Drawing upon intersections of astronomy and mathematics, history, literature, and lived experience, the poems in Open Interval locate the self in the interval between body and name.

Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, author of nine collections of poetry and three volumes of influential essays, is regarded by many as the greatest Irish poet since Yeats.Passage to the Center is the most comprehensive critical treatment to date on Heaney's poetry and the first to study Heaney's body of work up to Seeing Things and The Spirit Level. It is also the first to examine the poems from the perspective of religion, one of Heaney's guiding preoccupations. According to Tobin, the growth of Heaney's poetry may be charted through the recurrent figure of "the center," a key image in the relationship that evolved over time between the poet and his inherited place, an evolution that involved the continual re-evaluation and re-vision of imaginative boundaries. In a way that previous studies have not, Tobin's work examines Heaney's poetry in the context of modernist and postmodernist concerns about the desacralizing of civilization and provides a challenging engagement with the work of a living master.

This catalogue presents the Islamic, Oriental Christian, Judaic and Samaritan manuscripts in the University library of Leipzig’s collection. The largest part of the material is Islamic, and it is presented here according to categories. Manuscripts are described by title (if known) and a brief summary of the contents. Dimensions for most of the pieces are given as well. The Christian material includes manuscripts in Arabic, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, and Georgian. A numerical concordance adds to the utility of this important manuscript collection.

This specialized study by renowned linguist Rubens Duval brings together several grammatical studies between its covers. For the most part this intriguing volume is an exploration of the dialects of Neo-Aramaic of Salmas in the area of Azerbaijan and northwest Iran. Duval transcribed in handwritten, Roman characters, the aural information he received in the region from Syrian Christians and Jews. These are translated into French, making access to the linguistic information available to non-Semitic specialists. Duval concludes the book with an article on Syriac inscriptions of Salmas. This book is very rare in the used book market.

This handbook of foreign loan words in the Arabic of the Quran is set up in dictionary format. Each word is given in Arabic and in transliteration, followed by an extensive definition. As useful today as when it was first published, this volume will be welcomed by students of Arabic and especially those who are concerned with its relationship to foreign languages.

“An artist who moonlights as a dentist. A worm who's eternal. A farmer who milks his cow to death. Not to mention the guy with a belly button for an eye. Russell Edson, self-named Little Mr. Prose Poem, returns with See Jack, a book of fractured fairy tales, whose impeccable logic undermines logic itself, a book that champions what he has called elsewhere 'the dark uncomfortable metaphor.' 'What better way to die,' he writes in the final prose poem, 'than waiting for the fat lady to sing in the make-believe of theater, where nothing's real, not the fat lady, not even death . . . ' See Jack may be Edson's best book yet—proof that his imaginative powers keep growing. What a deliciously scary thought!” —Peter Johnson

This edition of the Syriac-Arabic glosses of Isho Bar Ali is a publication difficult to locate. These glosses are located in the second part of Bar Ali’s lexicon, as the first part had been previously published. Bar Ali, a physician as well as a lexicographer, produced this noted Syriac-Arabic dictionary showing the meanings of Syriac words in Arabic. This historic step in the development of Syriac lexicography is analyzed here according to the glosses of the numerous manuscripts cited in the forward.

Literary fiction has presented readers with centuries of memorable women in trouble. Here, the author of the widely praised and beloved Come and Go, Molly Snow, Kentucky novelist Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, offers Jo Sinclair, a long-term single parent of four children. Fleeing an abusive relationship, she winds up in Sea Cove, New Jersey, in front of The Breakers, a salty old hotel in the process of renovation. In this unlikely setting, Jo finds a way to renovate herself, to reclaim the promising life that was derailed by pregnancy when she was fourteen. She impulsively convinces the owner to give her a job painting the rooms and settles in with her youngest child, thirteen-year-old Nick. A grand cast of characters wanders through this little world, among them Iris Zephyr, the hotel's ninety-two-year-old permanent boarder; Charlie, a noble mixed breed dog; Wendy, Jo's tough eighteen-year-old daughter, who has suffered most from her mother's past mistakes; Marco, the nearby gas station owner, who bids fair to become her mother's next mistake. Soon Victor Mangold, Jo's former teacher, a well-known and exuberant poet, arrives on the premises to stir everything up, including Jo's yearning for a life of art and committed love. At The Breakers is a deeply felt and beautifully written novel about forgiveness and reconciliation. Its heroine, put through the fire, comes out with a chance for happiness, if she can muster the faith, courage, and optimism to take that chance.

This volume includes the Greenlandic originals and English translations of selections from Aqqaluk Lynge's poetic output over the course of the last thirty-five years. It launches the International Polar Institute Press's bilingual Greenlandic Literature in Translation series, the first cultural project arising from the US-Greenland Joint Declaration signed in 1993. This series examines the decline of ritual and physical traditions as Greenlanders adapt to modern technology while struggling to retain their cultural heritage in the midst of challenges posed by modern commerce and climate change. It reproduces for the first time in English the voices of a distinct and proud people in poetry, fiction, and performance/mixed media. Speaking from the universal heart and mind, Lynge's powerful verses rely on strong images drawn from traditional life, the people, and the geography of his beloved Greenland as it moves toward sovereignty.

Joanna Russ, a feminist writer best known for The Female Man (1975), has produced a fierce, intense body of fiction and essays whose influence has been wide-ranging and complex. Her many publications include How to Suppress Women's Writing (1983), and she has won both of science fiction's most prestigious awards, the Nebula and the Hugo. The essays in this volume examine every aspect of Russ's body of work and provide a critical assessment that is long overdue. The first part of the book, "Criticism and Community," gives readers a context for and overview of Russ's works, and includes discussions of Russ's role in the creation of a feminist science fiction tradition. The second part, "Fiction," offers detailed analyses of some of Russ's writing. Contributors include: Andrew M. Butler, Brian Charles Clark, Samuel R. Delany, Edward James , Sandra Lindow, Keridwen Luis, Paul March-Russell, Helen Merrick, Dianne Newell, Graham Sleight, Jenéa Tallentire, Jason Vest, Sherryl Vint, Pat Wheeler, Tess Williams, Gary K. Wolfe, and Lisa Yaszek.

Historically, there has been great deliberation about the limits of human knowledge. Isaac Newton, recognizing his own shortcomings, once described himself as \u201ca boy standing on the seashore . .

The famous Persian dictionary of Sayyid Abdurrashid, now quite difficult to locate, is an historic dictionary to which linguists still make reference. The Farhang I Rashidi was compiled by the Persian scholar Abd ur-Rashid bin Abd ul-Ghafur Husaini al-Madani al-Tattawi (d. 1653) who lived in Thatta, now the Sindh province of Pakistan. One of two dictionaries compiled by Abd ur-Rashid, this lexicon, presented entirely in Classic Persian, marks a turning point in Persian lexicography and ranks as one of the cultural and literary achievements of the seventeenth century. The two volumes of this historic dictionary are here bound together, providing an affordable alternative to earlier two-part editions.