The Arms Of Venus

A Tale Blazed Through Heaven examines developments in the representation of the classical tale of Mars, Venus, and Vulcan in the literature and painting of the Golden Age of Spain (c.1526-1681). Anchored in close analysis of individual primary texts, the five chapters that comprise this study assess how poets and painters breathed new life into the tale inherited from Homer, Ovid, and others, examining some of the ways in which the story of Mars, Venus, and Vulcan was disguised, developed, expanded, mocked, combined with or played off against different subjects, or otherwise modified in order to pique the interest of successive generations of readers and viewers. Each chapter discusses what particular changes and shifts in emphasis reveal about the tale itself, specific renderings, the aims and intentions of individual poets and painters, and the wider context of the literary and visual culture of Early Modern Spain. Discussing a range of poems by both canonical (Garcilaso de la Vega, Luis de Góngora, Lope de Vega, etc.) and less well-known writers (Juan de la Cueva, Alonso de Castillo Solórzano, Salvador Jacinto Polo de Medina, etc.), and culminating in detailed examination of select mythological works by Philip IV's court painter, Diego Velázquez, this book sheds light on questions relating to aspects of classical reception in the Renaissance, the rise of specific poetic styles (epic, mock-epic, burlesque, etc.), the interplay between the sister arts of poetry and painting, and the continual process of imitation and invention that was one of the defining features of the Spanish Golden Age.

This book is a biography of the famed German composer Richard Wagner. He is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionized opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesize the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama.

Venus in Arms is Criss Jami's 2nd poetry book. It contains a total of 30 poems, each followed by a brief word of thought.

A fully illustrated study of Shakespeare's awareness of traditions in visual art and their presence in his plays and poems.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1966.

Although the themes of women's complicity in and resistance to war have been part of literature from early times, they have not been fully integrated into conventional conceptions of the war narrative. Combining feminist literary criticism with the emerging field of feminist war theory, this collection explores the role of gender as an organizing principle in the war system and reveals how literature perpetuates the ancient myth of "arms and the man." The volume shows how the gendered conception of war has both shaped literary texts and formed the literary canon. It identifies and interrogates the conventional war text, with its culturally determined split between warlike men and peaceful women, and it confirms that women's role in relation to war is much more complex and complicitous than such essentializing suggests. The contributors examine a wide range of familiar texts from fresh perspectives and bring new texts to light. Collectively, these essays range in time from the Trojan War to the nuclear age. The contributors are June Jordan, Lorraine Helms, Patricia Francis Cholakian, Jane E. Schultz, Margaret R. Higonnet, James Longenbach, Laura Stempel Mumford, Sharon O'Brien, Jane Marcus, Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Susan Schweik, Carol J. Adams, Esther Fuchs, Barbara Freeman, Gillian Brown, Helen M. Cooper, Adrienne Auslander Munich, and Susan Merrill Squier.