5 Cultures / Languages English eBooks

A Short History of French Literature
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature
Sign Languages in Contact
The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics
The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)

A Short History of French Literature
Publisher: O U P 2003 | 360 Pages | ISBN: 0198159315 , 0199291187 | PDF | 2 MB
This book traces the history of French literature from its beginnings to the resent. Within its remarkably brief compass, it offers a wide-ranging, personal, and detailed--though selective--account of major writers and movements. Developments in French literature are presented in an innovative way, not as an even sequence of literary events but as a series of stories told at varying pace and with different kinds of focus. Readers can thus take in the broad sweep of historical change, grasp the main characteristics of major periods, or enjoy a close appraisal of individual works and their contexts. The book is written in an accessible and non-technical style that will make it attractive both to students of French and to non-specialist readers.

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature
Publisher: C UP 2008 | 300 Pages | ISBN: 0521861756 , 0521679753 | PDF | 2 MB
Medieval French literature encompasses 450 years of literary output in Old and Middle French, mostly produced in Northern France and England. These texts, including courtly lyrics, prose and verse romances, dits amoureux and plays, proved hugely influential for other European literary traditions in the medieval period and beyond. This Companion offers a wide-ranging and stimulating guide to literature composed in medieval French from its beginnings in the ninth century until the Renaissance. The essays are grounded in detailed analysis of canonical texts and authors such as the Chanson de Roland, the Roman de la Rose, Villon's Testament, Chr--tien de Troyes, Machaut, Christine de Pisan and the Tristan romances. Featuring a chronology and suggestions for further reading, this is the ideal companion for students and scholars in other fields wishing to discover the riches of the French medieval tradition.

Sign Languages in Contact
Publisher: Gallaudet Univ Pr | 2007 | ISBN: 1563683563 | English | PDF | 285 pages | 1.6 Mb
This volume collects for the first time various accounts of contact between sign languages throughout the world, presenting an exciting opportunity to further understand the structural and social factors of this linguistic component in Deaf communities. Editor David Quinto-Pozos has divided Sign Languages in Contact into four parts, starting with Contact in a Trilingual Setting. The sole essay in this section features a study of Maori signs by Rachel McKee, David McKee, Kirsten Smiler, and Karen Pointon that reveals the construction of indigenous Deaf identity in New Zealand Sign Language.
In Part Two: Lexical Comparisons, Jeffrey Davis conducts an historic, linguistic assessment of varieties of North American Indian sign languages. Daisuke Sasaki compares the Japanese Sign Language lexicon with that of Taiwan Sign Language by focusing on signs that share the same meaning and all parameters except for their handshapes. Judith Yoel's chapter takes up the entirety of Part Three: Language Attrition, with her analysis of the erosion of Russian Sign Language among immigrants to Israel. The final part describes how educators and other "foreign"visitors can influence indigenous sign languages. Karin Hoyer delineates the effects of international sign and gesture on Albanian Sign Language. Jean Ann, Wayne H. Smith, and Chiangsheng Yu close this significant collection by assessing contact between Mainland China's sign language and Taiwan Sign Language in the Ch'iying School in Taiwan.

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics
2015 | ISBN: 0199856338 | English | 792 pages | PDF | 12 MB
The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics offers a broad and comprehensive coverage of the entire field from a multi-disciplinary perspective. All chapters are contributed by leading scholars in their respective areas.

The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society)
English | 2008 | ISBN: 1412907942 | 241 Pages | PDF | 2 MB
Offering social commentary at the deepest levels of historical and critical reference, The Media City links Myspace to Howard Hughes; trams to cinema; security cameras to exploding buildings; reality TV to Marx; and Lenin on privacy to Kracauer on the mass ornament. Wide-ranging and richly illustrated, it intersects disciplines and connects phenomena which are too often left isolated from each other to propose a new way of understanding public and private space and social life in contemporary cities?