The Fabulous Imagination

"This is one of the few books on Montaigne that fuses analytical skill with humane awareness of why Montaigne matters." Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities, Yale University "In this exhilarating and learned book on Montaigne's essays, Lawrence D. Kritzman contemporizes the great writer. Reading him from today's deconstructive America, Kritzman discovers Montaigne always already deep into a dialogue with Jacques Derrida and psychoanalysis. One cannot but admire this fabulous act of translation." Hélène Cixous "Throughout his career, Lawrence D. Kritzman has demonstrated an intimate knowledge of Montaigne's essays and an engagement with French philosophy and critical theory. The Fabulous Imagination sheds precious new light on one of the founders of modern individualism and on his crucial quest for self-knowledge." Jean Starobinski, professor emeritus of French literature, University of Geneva Michel de Montaigne's (1533-1592) Essais was a profound study of human subjectivity. More than three hundred years before the advent of psychoanalysis, Montaigne embarked on a remarkable quest to see and imagine the self from a variety of vantages. Through the questions How shall I live? How can I know myself? he explored the significance of monsters, nightmares, and traumatic memories; the fear of impotence; the fragility of gender; and the act of anticipating and coping with death. In this book, Lawrence D. Kritzman traces Montaigne's development of the Western concept of the self. For Montaigne, imagination lies at the core of an internal universe that influences both the body and the mind. Imagination is essential to human experience. Although Montaigne recognized that the imagination can confuse the individual, "the fabulous imagination" can be curative, enabling the mind's "I" to sustain itself in the face of hardship. Kritzman begins with Montaigne's study of the fragility of gender and its relationship to the peripatetic movement of a fabulous imagination. He then follows with the essayist's examination of the act of mourning and the power of the imagination to overcome the fear of death. Kritzman concludes with Montaigne's views on philosophy, experience, and the connection between self-portraiture, ethics, and oblivion. His reading demonstrates that the mind's I, as Montaigne envisioned it, sees by imagining that which is not visible, thus offering an alternative to the logical positivism of our age.

The purpose of Reading the Fantastic Imagination: The Avatars of a Literary Genre is the observation of the very hybridity of the fantastic genre, as a typical postmodern form. The volume continues an older project of the editor and a large number of the contributors, that of investigating the current status of several popular genres, from historical fiction to romance. The scrutiny continues in this third volume, dedicated to the fantastic imagination and the plethora of themes, moods, media, and formats deriving from it. FanLit is surely trendy, even if it is not highbrow, despite its noble ancestry. This apparent paradox characterizes many of the literary genres en vogue today, from historical fiction to romance. This very contradiction forms part of the basis for this book. After the success of the previous book in the series dedicated to a “borderline” literary genre – Romance: The History of a Genre was declared by Cambridge Scholars Publishing as the Critics’ Choice Book of the Month in January 2013 – this collection of studies about the fantastic imagination takes a further step into completing a larger research project which seeks to investigate the varieties of popular fiction. Although all contributors in the series teach canonical literary texts, they did not hesitate to plunge into the opposite area of fictional work and, moreover, continued doing so even though such a project caused the “raise of a few (high)brows,” (Percec 2012, 232) as argued in the Endnote of Romance: The History of a Genre.

More than three hundred years before the advent of psychoanalysis, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) embarked on a remarkable quest to see and imagine the self from a variety of vantages. He explored the significance of monsters, nightmares, and traumas; the fear of impotence; the fragility of gender; and the anticipation of death. For Montaigne, imagination lies at the core of an internal universe influencing both the body and the mind. "The fabulous imagination" can be curative, enabling the mind's "I" to sustain itself in the face of hardship. Tracing Montaigne's development of the Western concept of the self, Lawrence D. Kritzman begins with his study of the fragility of gender and its relationship to the peripatetic movement of a fabulous imagination. He then follows with the essayist's examination of the act of mourning and the power of the imagination to overcome the fear of death, and Montaigne's views on philosophy, experience, and the connection between self-portraiture, ethics, and oblivion.

The Fabulous Girls' Book is the indispensable guide for fabulous girls everywhere, full of tips and tricks to help every girl be utterly fabulous in every way.

Fans of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library and The Mysterious Benedict Society will race through this exciting adventure about an orphan, his unusual friends, and the power of imagination. What if everything you imagined could become real? It all starts when Professor Eisenstone, scientist and inventor, creates a box that’s supposed to turn whatever you imagine into reality. There’s only one problem: he can’t get it to work. Until Tim shows up. An orphan with an especially keen imagination, Tim brings to life Phil, an eloquent finger monkey with a dry sense of humor. Tim and Professor Eisenstone work in secret to make the box more powerful. But when Eisenstone is kidnapped along with his contraption, Tim, Phil, and the professor’s granddaughter, Dee, must find the criminals before they use the box to turn their imagined evil into something all too real. Creating a miniature monkey is all well and good. But in order to rescue his friend, Tim will have to face his darkest fears and unleash the true potential of his own mind. “A splendid adventure, hilarious and harrowing in turn and so strongly cast that even the precocious pocket primate doesn't steal the show.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review "With a solid mystery, fantastic device, warm friendships, a funny monkey, and heartening conclusion, this has a heaping serving of middle-grade antics."-Booklist “The Imagination Box is children’s fiction in the classic mode, with double-crosses, deceitful adults and narrow escapes all meshing into a solid mystery plot…and a timeless be-careful-what-you-wish-for message.”—Financial Times (UK)

This edited collection explores the axis where monstrosity and borderlands meet to reflect the tensions, apprehensions, and excitement over the radical changes of the early modern era. The book investigates the monstrous as it acts in liminal spaces in the Renaissance and the era of Enlightenment. Zones of interaction include chronological change – from the early New World encounters through the seventeenth century – and cultural and scientific changes, in the margins between national boundaries, and also cultural and intellectual boundaries.

"Compiled directly from The Jim Henson Company archives, Imagination Illustrated adapts the diary that Jim faithfully kept throughout his career, supplementing it with a trove of little-seen visual material, including rare sketches, personal and production photographs, storyboards, doodles, and much more. Throughout, archivist Karen Falk delves into the behind-the-scenes details of Henson's life and his artistic process"--P. [4] of cover.

A study of the practice of vivid, self-directed imagination in the optimistic spirit of the early-modern French writers.