544 research outputs found
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The same river twice : a boatman\u27s journey home
No full textIn the summer of 1991 Michael Burke, an experienced river guide, embarks on a three-week journey down a series of remote rivers in British Columbia. Leaving behind his pregnant wife, he embraces the perils of a voyage with a companion he barely knows in a raft that may not weather the trip. He attempts to reconcile the shifting fates of his life—his transition from river guide to husband, father, and academic. At the same time, he hopes to explore his connection to a distant relative, Sid Barrington, who was a champion “swiftwater pilot of the North” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.As Burke contemplates what he and Sid may have had in common, he meditates on the changing meaning of rivers, and the impossibility of fully recovering the past. In clear and graceful prose, Burke blends Sid’s colorful history with his own uncommon journey. He also reflects upon the quick currents of time and the fierce passion he shares with Sid for the life of river running in Alaska and the west. Unlike most river-running books that often describe waterways in the lower forty-eight states, The Same River Twice introduces readers to rough, austere, and unfamiliar rivers in the northern wilderness. Burke has an intimate understanding of these remote, free-flowing rivers. He effectively captures the thrill of moving water, the spirit of rivers and river canyons, and the life of river guides. This insightful memoir brings readers into a confluence of rivers, where past and present merge, revealing the power of wilderness and the truth about changing course.https://scholarworks.umf.maine.edu/publications/1008/thumbnail.jp
Not your mother\u27s vampire : vampires in young adult fiction
No full textExamining young adult vampire fiction and how it fits in both the contemporary and classic vampire canon, the book\u27s analysis begins with a primer on vampire scholarship, including a brief deconstruction of ten seminal vampire representations-five literary, five cinematic-and their impact on young adult vampire novels; the evolution of vampires from scary Gothic enemies into postmodern sexualized heroes is traced throughout the book; and the influence of Anne Rice\u27s Vampire Chronicles.Subsequent chapters examine current young adult vampires novels from such popular horror authors as Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, Christopher Pike, R. L. Stine, Darren Shan, and L. J. Smith, and are divided into three categories based on narrative structure: the process of turning into a vampire, humans and vampires trying to find their way in life, and romantic relationships with a vampire partner. Analysis also addresses vampire conventions (the traditions that exist in each vampire universe), vampires and sexuality, and good and reluctant vampires. The human characters who coexist with vampires in these novels receive the same treatment. Additionally, issues of gender, age, and affectional orientation of human and vampire characters are discussed, as are postmodern constructions of good and evil.Not Your Mother\u27s Vampire contains an exploration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a television phenomenon, which has sparked an entirely new academic field: Buffy Studies. The vampire characters on Buffy and parallel series, Angel, are explored as are a few main humans (slayers and witches alike). The final chapter of the book is an annotated bibliography of seminal vampire scholarship. As the only in-depth examination of young adult vampire novels in existence, this book is essential for students and scholars of the literature.https://scholarworks.umf.maine.edu/publications/1052/thumbnail.jp
Insect poetics
No full textInsects are everywhere. There are millions of species sharing the world with humans and other animals. Though literally woven into the fabric of human affairs, insects are considered alien from the human world. Animal studies and rights have become a fecund field, but for the most part scant attention has been paid to the relationship between insects and humans. Insect Poetics redresses that imbalance by welcoming insects into the world of letters and cultural debate. In Insect Poetics, the first book to comprehensively explore the cultural and textual meanings of bugs, editor Eric Brown argues that insects are humanity’s “other.” In order to be experienced, the insect world must be mediated by art or technology (as in the case of an ant farm or Kafka’s Metamorphoses) while humans observe, detached and fascinated. In eighteen original essays, this book illuminates the ways in which our human intellectual and cultural models have been influenced by the natural history of insects. Through critical readings contributors address such topics as performing insects in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, the cockroach in the contemporary American novel, the butterfly’s “voyage out” in Virginia Woolf, and images of insect eating in literature and popular culture. In surprising ways, contributors tease out the particularities of insects as cultural signifiers and propose ways of thinking about “insectivity,” suggesting fertile cross-pollinations between entomology and the arts, between insects and the humanities. Contributors: May Berenbaum, Yves Cambefort, Marion W. Copeland, Nicky Coutts, Bertrand Gervais, Sarah Gordon, Cristopher Hollingsworth, Heather Johnson, Richard J. Leskosky, Tony McGowan, Erika Mae Olbricht, Marc Olivier, Roy Rosenstein, Rachel Sarsfield, Charlotte Sleigh, Andre Stipanovic. Eric C. Brown is assistant professor of English at the University of Maine at Farmington. He has written previously about insects and eschatology in Edmund Spenser’s Muiopotmos.https://scholarworks.umf.maine.edu/publications/1005/thumbnail.jp
On the ice : an intimate portrait of life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica
No full textFollows the author\u27s trip to McMurdo Station in Antartica, where she discovers how a community can allow a life to reset.https://scholarworks.umf.maine.edu/publications/1036/thumbnail.jp
Worse than beasts : an anatomy of melancholy and the literature of travel in 17th and 18th century England
No full textFrom 1500 to 1700, the English encountered the people of five continents, who were similarly portrayed in English travel literature. This monograph explores the derogatory aspect of these portrayals. Discussion begins with the coincidence of images of non-Europeans and madmen in Gulliver\u27s Travels, which is an entrée to exploring an association between madness and foreigners in the English imagination. Gulliver\u27s Travels and Robert Burton\u27s Anatomy of Melancholy (1631) provide the foundation for discussion.https://scholarworks.umf.maine.edu/publications/1056/thumbnail.jp
Renovation : poems
No full textA collection of poems by Jeffrey Thomson.https://scholarworks.umf.maine.edu/publications/1068/thumbnail.jp
The country of lost sons : poems
No full textJeffrey Thomson\u27s second collection of poems, The Country of Lost Sons, investigates the narrative environment of childhood, especially the way violence is inscribed on children through myth, culture, and legend. The poems trace the growth of the author\u27s young son (his vulnerability and equal potential for violence) across a landscape of rewritten myth and narrative. From the Trojan War (bracketed as it is by the deaths of two children, Iphegenia and Astyanax) through the Biblical accounts of Job, Jeremiah, and Jephthah to the modern tragedies of the war in Kosovo, AIDS, and the contemporary culture of violence, the poems build to a culmination of fear that is only tempered by love, grace, and the redemptive power of storytelling itself. About the Author The Country of Lost Sons is Jeffrey Thomson\u27s third collection of poetry. His first collection of poetry was The Halo Brace (Birch Brook Press). Renovation, his third book, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press. He has also published poetry and nonfiction in Quarterly West, New Delta Review, Puerto del Sol, Gulf Coast, and Willow Springs, as well as critical essays on Sandra Cisneros, James Wright, Derek Walcott and the environmental elegy. His works have won numerous awards, including the Master\u27s Poetry Contest and the Academy of American Poets\u27 Prize on three occasions. What Others Have Said In the midst of so many fast-talking contemporary poetry books comes Jeffrey Thomson\u27s lovely The Country of Lost Sons. Here is a book that chooses tender, meditative music over electric chatter. Here are the poems that tell us poetry can still explore and heal earnestly. More than praise, I want to offer gratitude for such an intimate book. After reading it, you will want to offer gratitude too. -Terrance A. Hayeshttps://scholarworks.umf.maine.edu/publications/1069/thumbnail.jp
