Selected readings and commentary for the medical humanities. Learning how to behave and engage professionally can be one of the most challenging parts of embarking on a career in the medical field. But using the "power of stories" can teach, heal, and enlighten; encourage the development of empathy; and help healthcare providers "be with suffering" and appreciate who their patients are, not just what disease they have. The humanities offer knowledge...

In the late 1950s, Random House editor Jason Epstein would talk jazz with Ralph Ellison or chat with Andy Warhol while pouring drinks in his office. By the 1970s, editors were poring over profit-and-loss statements. The electronics company RCA bought Random House in 1965, and then other large corporations purchased other formerly independent publishers. As multinational conglomerates consolidated the industry, the business of literature-and literature...

The Shahnameh, an epic poem recounting the foundation of Iran across mythical, heroic, and historical ages, is the beating heart of Persian literature and culture. Composed by Abu al-Qasem Ferdowsi over a thirty-year period and completed in the year 1010, the epic has entertained generations of readers and profoundly shaped Persian culture, society, and politics. For a millennium, Iranian and Persian-speaking people around the globe have read, memorized,...

In The Discarded Image, C. S. Lewis paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It describes the "image" discarded by later years as "the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe." This, Lewis's last book, has been hailed as "the...

Written to celebrate Queen Victoria's reign, this 1897 study covers "sixty years of books and bookmen." Shorter focuses in turn on the poets, novelists, historians, and critics of the time-covering such figures as William Wordsworth, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Lord Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, and John Stuart Mill, among many others.

An utterly unique collection composed by the award-winning poet and writer, a global anthology of pieces from lesser-known classics by luminaries like Franz Kafka, Samuel R. Delany, and Gwendolyn Brooks to up-and-coming writers that examine pathos and feeling, giving a well-timed rehab to the word "pathetic" "Literature is pathetic." So claims Eileen Myles in their provocative and robust introduction to Pathetic Literature, a breathtaking mishmash...

The literature referred to is the best that we can suggest. When better shall come to our attention, that will be included, for only "the best is good enough for children." All selections presented have been tried either in this school or elsewhere. Nothing is presented wholly on a theoretical basis. Much literature is offered for each grade-much more than can possibly be presented. The intention is to refer to types of suitable material, leaving...

Gale Researcher Guide for: Transcendentalist Literature is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

Starting with the notion that the best way to study literature is to read it, this 1917 overview takes the reader on tour-minimizing the amount of biography often found in these sorts of books. The book begins with the earliest Anglo-Saxon writings, and moves through the Renaissance, Shakespeare, Milton, the writers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Victoria era, and the modern world of Kipling, Conrad, Wharton and others.

Originally published in 1984, Reading the Romance challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular...