I have nothing to declare,' Wilde once told an American customs official, 'except my genius.' A good part of that genius is evident in the essays and poems included in this volume. There is the intellectual genius of The Soul of Man under Socialism, in which he clearly foresaw the dangers of economic bureaucracy and state-worship: for Wilde socialism meant liberation and individuality, not enslavement. Then there is the emotional genius of De Profundis, the long, introspective and often hostile letter he addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas from prison. And there is the poetical genius of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, in which Wilde's generous nature could movingly express for another's misery the sorrow he found it hard to express for his own. This collection contains, too, many examples of that humorous and epigrammic genius which captured the London theatre and which, by suddenly casting light from an unexpected angle, widened the bounds of truth.

Aswoensdag: wereldwijd zetten priesters een askruisje op de voorhoofden van miljoenen katholieke gelovigen. Zo, en op vele andere manieren, worden menselijke lichamen opgenomen in dwingende constellaties die richting geven, en betekenis. Ook poëzie werkt met de as-tekens die samen de taal maken en de werkelijkheid breken. In poëzie komt het lichaam opnieuw tot spreken: mateloos, buitenissig, ontketend, aan onze eerste diepste drift ten prooi. In poëzie rebelleert, tegen de gelovige conquistadores, de heidense en exotische Azteek, die geen boodschap heet aan het 'kniel en pas u aan of verdwijn'.0Gedichtendagessay.

There are, always, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in oneâe(tm)s philosophyâe"and in these essays Charles Taylor turns to those things not fully imagined or avenues not wholly explored in his epochal A Secular Age. Here Taylor talks in detail about thinkers who are his allies and interlocutors, such as Iris Murdoch, Alasdair MacIntyre, Robert Brandom, and Paul Celan. He offers major contributions to social theory, expanding on the issues of nationalism, democratic exclusionism, religious mobilizations, and modernity. And he delves even more deeply into themes taken up in A Secular Age: the continuity of religion from the past into the future; the nature of the secular; the folly of hoping to live by âeoereason aloneâe ; the perils of moralism. He also speculates on how irrationality emerges from the heart of rationality itself, and why violence breaks out again and again. In A Secular Age, Taylor more evidently foregrounded his Catholic faith, and there are several essays here that further explore that faith. Overall, this is a hopeful book, showing how, while acknowledging the force of religion and the persistence of violence and folly, we nonetheless have the power to move forward once we have given up the brittle pretensions of a narrow rationalism.

Twaalf literair-historische kritische beschouwingen over de moderne consumtiemaatschappij, over emancipatie, seksualiteit en burgerlijkheid en over schrijvers en hun werk.

Offers a critical introduction to the novels and short stories of Katherine Anne Porter, tracing the biographical and thematic development of her works.