The Critical Essays

The essays in this volume were written during the years that its author's first four books were published in France. They chart the course of Barthe's criticism from the vocabularies of existentialism and Marxism (reflections on the social situation of literature and writer's responsibility before History) to a psychoanalysis of substances (after Bachelard) and a psychoanalytical anthropology (which evidently brought Barthes to his present terms of understanding with Levi-Strauss and Lacan).

This invaluable book offers the student of literature detailed advice on the entire process of critical essay writing, from first facing the question right through to producing a fair copy for final submission to the teacher.

The ability to write a critical essay is an essential skill for every student to learn. Learning how to write the critical essay begins in secondary education, but it doesn't stop there. The critical essay is a specific style of essay that analyzes and interprets the author's purpose, intent, theme, or thesis of a specific body of work. Learning how to write a proper critical essay is crucial for being able to enhance, practice, and apply critical thinking skills. This book will teach students and learners of any age how to write a critical essay. It will take an introductory approach and assume that the reader has never written a critical essay before. This book will teach students: * What a critical essay is* The basic structure to a critical essay* How to organize a critical essay* How to write a critical essayWhile a person or student may excel at critical thinking skills, it can be difficult to organize those thoughts into a coherent essay that clearly communicates the writer's ideas and interpretations of the text. Learn the basics and transform your writing into proficient communication and analysis.

Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series, edited by David P. Pierson, explores the contexts, politics, and style of AMC's original series Breaking Bad. The book's first section locates and addresses the series from several contemporary social contexts, including neo-liberalism, its discourses and policies, the cultural obsession with the economy of time and its manipulation, and the epistemological principles and assumptions of Walter White's criminal alias Heisenberg. Section two investigates how the series characterizes and intersects with current cultural politics, such as male angst and the re-emergence of hegemonic masculinity, the complex portrayal of Latinos, and the depiction of physical and mental impairment and disability. The final section takes a close look at the series' distinctive visual, aural, and narrative stylistics. Under examination are Breaking Bad's unique visual style whereby image dominates sound, the distinct role and use of beginning teaser segments to disorient and enlighten audiences, the representation of geographic space and place, the position of narrative songs to complicate viewer identification, and the integral part that emotions play as a form of dramatic action in the series.

The life and work of motion picture director Robert Altman (1925-2006) are interpreted from a variety of perspectives in this collection of essays. Actors, historians, film scholars, and cultural theorists reflect on Altman and his five-decade career and discuss the significance of music, history and genre in his films. Two actors who have appeared in some of the filmmaker's most important works are prominently represented, with a statement from Elliot Gould (MASH, The Long Goodbye, California Split) and an essay by Michael Murphy (McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, Tanner '88). The collection ends with an essay on the importance of death in the director's final productions The Company (2003) and Prairie Home Companion (2006) by noted Altman scholar Robert T. Self.

Challenges the marginalization of gay men and lesbians of color in the dominant academic discourses by focusing scholarly attention on the imaginative works of representative Native-American, Asian-American, Latino(a), and African-American gay and lesbian writers. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Also published as the Journal of Homosexuality, v.26, nos.2/3, 1993. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This edited collection offers an interdisciplinary study of Twin Peaks: The Return, the third season of a TV program that has attracted the attention (and appreciation) of spectators, fans, and critics for over two decades. The book takes readers into several distinct areas and addresses the different approaches and the range of topics invited by the multidimensionality of the subject itself: the philosophical, the artistic, the socio-cultural, and the personal. The eighteen chapters constituting the volume are academic in their approach to the subject and in their methodology, whether they apply a historical, psychoanalytical, film studies, or gender studies perspective to the text under examination. The variety and range of perspectives in these aforementioned chapters reflect the belief that a study of the full complexity of Twin Peaks: The Return, as well as a timely assessment of the critical importance of the program, requires both an interdisciplinary perspective and the fusion of different intellectual approaches across genres. The chapters demonstrate a collective awareness of the TV series as a fundamental milestone in contemporary culture.