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This book applies comparative cultural and literary models to a reading of Catullus' poems as social performances of a 'poetics of manhood': a competitively, often outrageously, self-allusive bid for recognition and admiration. Earlier readings of Catullus, based on Romantic and Modernist notions of 'lyric' poetry, have tended to focus on the relationship with Lesbia and to ignore the majority of the shorter poems, which are instead directed at other men. Professor Wray approaches these poems in the light of more recent models for understanding male social interaction in the premodern Mediterranean, placing them in their specifically Roman historical context while bringing out their strikingly 'postmodern' qualities. The result is an alternative way of reading the fiercely aggressive and delicately refined agonism performed in Catullus' shorter poems. All Latin and Greek quoted is supplied with an English translation.… (more)
User reviews
The broad outline of the story is that it takes place in a world where the Soviets beat the USA to the moon, and then also to Mars. But the two cosmonauts
Johnny is uninterested in his status as a celebrity back on earth, and mostly wants to stay at his self-designed home, drink himself into a stupor, and repeatedly unsuccessfully propose to his professional-dancer girlfriend, Lisa. Being a reasonably well-adjusted person who is wary of marrying a celebrity train-wreck, Lisa does her best to push Johnny towards healing and growth, but she's not capable of solving Johnny's problems for him.
The middle bulk of this book (about 95%) involves Johnny struggling with emotional regulation, Johnny's former bosses dealing with congressional budget allocation woes, moon base bureaucracy and personnel issues, and a tedious love triangle involving Johnny, Lisa, and a therapist who almost got through to Johnny.
The final 5 pages of the book involve an exciting and very Sci-Fi development that neatly buttons up all of the characters' problems, their nation's larger problems, and some deep existential questions that have plagued humanity since the Stone Age. The big twist was foreshadowed as early as the third chapter of the book, but I certainly didn't see it coming. I thought at first that it was a Deus Ex Machina, but on further consideration the groundwork is there, it is just de-emphasized.
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Omslaget viser en astronaut udsat for en affin afbildning og et par rumskibe i forgrunden
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Oversat fra amerikansk "The tomorrow people" af ikke angivet oversætter
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874.01 |