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Bartleby
"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of ''Putnam's Magazine'' and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his '' The Piazza Tales'' in 1856. In the story, a Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk, who after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copies or do any other task required of him, responding to any request with the words "I would prefer not to." The story likely takes place between 1848 and 1853, during the Antebellum period in American history. Numerous critical essays have been published about the story, which scholar Robert Milder describes as "unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction" in the Melville canon. Plot The narrator is an unnamed elderly lawyer who works with legal documents and has an office on Wall Street in New York. In his employ are two scriveners, Turkey and Nippers, whose ages a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herman Melville
Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are ''Moby-Dick'' (1851); ''Typee'' (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and ''Billy Budd, Billy Budd, Sailor'', a posthumously published novella. At the time of his death Melville was not well known to the public, but 1919, the centennial of his birth, was the starting point of a #Melville revival and Melville studies, Melville revival. ''Moby-Dick'' would eventually be considered one of the great American novels. Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on the merchant ship ''St. Lawrence'' and then, in 1841, on the whaler ''Acushnet'', but he jumped ship in the Marquesas I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Matteson
John Matteson (born March 3, 1961) is an American professor of English and legal writing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his first book, '' Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father''. Born in San Mateo, California, Matteson is the son of Thomas D. Matteson (1920–2011), an airline executive jointly responsible for developing the theory of reliability-centered maintenance, and Rosemary H. Matteson (1920–2010), who worked as a commercial artist before becoming a homemaker. Matteson attended Menlo School in Atherton, California. He graduated with an A.B. in history from Princeton University in 1983 after completing an 178-page-long senior thesis titled "The Confederate Cotton Embargo, 1861-1862: A Study in States' Rights." He then received a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986, and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University in 1999. He served as a law clerk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Determinism
Determinism is the Metaphysics, metaphysical view that all events within the universe (or multiverse) can occur only in one possible way. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. Like Eternalism (philosophy of time), eternalism, determinism focuses on particular events rather than the future as a concept. Determinism is often contrasted with free will, although some philosophers claim that the two are compatibilism, compatible. A more extreme antonym of determinism is indeterminism, or the view that events are not deterministically caused but rather occur due to random chance. Historically, debates about determinism have involved many philosophical positions and given rise to multiple varieties or interpretations of determinism. One topic of debate concerns the scope of determined systems. Some philosophers have maintained that the entire universe is a single determinate system ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, Unitarian, Natural philosophy, natural philosopher, English Separatist, separatist theologian, Linguist, grammarian, multi-subject educator and Classical liberalism, classical liberal Political philosophy, political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in several areas of science. Priestley is credited with his independent discovery of oxygen by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide, having isolated it in 1774. During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of carbonated water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community. Priestley's science was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Doctrine Of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated
''The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity'' (1777) is one of the major metaphysical works of 18th-century British polymath Joseph Priestley. Introduction Between 1774 and 1778, while serving as an assistant to Lord Shelburne, Priestley wrote a series of five major metaphysical works, arguing for a materialist philosophy even though such a position "entailed denial of free will and the soul." Continuing the arguments he had started in ''The Examination of Dr. Reid's Inquiry… Dr. Beattie's Essay… and Dr. Oswald's Appeal'' (1774) and '' Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit'' (1777), Priestley published ''The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated'' (1777), an "appendix" to the ''Disquisitions'' that "suggests that materialism and determinism are mutually supporting." Priestley explicitly stated that humans had no free will: "all things, past, present, and to come, are precisely what the Author of nature really intended them to be, and has made provision for." ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jonathan Edwards (theologian)
Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 – March 22, 1758) was an American Christian revival, revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalism in the United States, Congregationalist theologian. Edwards is widely regarded as one of America's most important and original philosophical theologians. Edwards' theological work is broad in scope but rooted in the Puritans, Puritan heritage as exemplified in the Westminster Confession of Faith, Westminster and Savoy Declaration, Savoy Confessions of Faith. Recent studies have emphasized how thoroughly Edwards grounded his life's work on conceptions of beauty, harmony, and ethical aptness, and how central the Age of Enlightenment was to his mindset. Edwards played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening and oversaw some of the first Christian revival, revivals in 1733–35 at First Church of Christ (Northampton, Massachusetts), his church in Northampton, Massachusetts. His work gave rise to a doctrine known as New England ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leo Marx
Leo Marx (November 15, 1919 – March 8, 2022) was an American historian, literary critic, and educator. He was Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for his works in the field of American studies. Marx studied the relationship between technology and culture in 19th and 20th century America. Early life and education Leo Marx was born on November 15, 1919, in New York City, to Leo and Theresa (Rubinstein) Marx. His father worked in the estate sales business and his mother was a homemaker. He grew up in New York City and Paris; his father died when Leo was a child. He graduated from Harvard University with a BA in history and literature in 1941. Military service in World War II followed, in the South Pacific. Marx returned to Harvard afterwards and got a PhD in 1950, one of the first to be granted in the History of American Civilization. Career Marx taught at the University of Minnesota from 1949 to 1958 and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It publishes a wide range of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', numerous academic journals, and advanced monographs in the academic fields. The press is located just south of the Midway Plaisance on the University of Chicago campus. One of its quasi-independent projects is the BiblioVault, a digital repository for scholarly books. History The University of Chicago Press was founded in 1890, making it one of the oldest continuously operating university presses in the United States. Its first published book was Robert F. Harper's ''Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum''. The book sold five copies during its first two years, but by 1900, the University of Chicago Pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lawrence Buell (academic)
Lawrence Ingalls Buell (born 1939) is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University, specialist on antebellum American literature and a pioneer of Ecocriticism. He is the 2007 recipient of the Jay Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Achievement in American Literary studies, the "highest professional award that the American Literature Section of the MLA can give." He won the 2003 Warren-Brooks Award for outstanding literary criticism for his 2003 book on Ralph Waldo Emerson. His ''Writing for an Endangered World'' won the 2001 John G. Cawelti Award for the best book in the field of American Culture Studies. He retired from Harvard in 2011. Life and work Professor Buell earned an A.B. at Princeton University in 1961 before enrolling at Cornell University for his Ph.D., which he was awarded in 1966. He was assistant professor and then professor at Oberlin College from 1966 until he moved to Harvard in 1990. He was a Guggenheim Foundation fellow, 1987-198 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Bollas
Christopher Bollas (born 1943) is an American-born British psychoanalyst and writer. He is a leading figure in contemporary psychoanalytic theory. Biography Early life and education Bollas was born in the United States in Washington, DC. He grew up in Laguna Beach, California, and later graduated in history from UC Berkeley in 1967. As an undergraduate Bollas studied intellectual history with Carl Schorske, and psychoanalytical anthropology with Alan Dundes. From 1967 to 1969 he trained in child counselling at the East Bay Activity Center in Oakland, California and from 1969 to 1973 he was the first graduate of the Program in Adult Psychotherapy at the University of Buffalo. At the University of Buffalo he earned a PhD in English Literature and studied with Norman Holland, Leslie Fiedler, Murray Schwartz, Michel Foucault, René Girard and with the Heideggerian psychoanalyst Heinz Lichtenstein. While at Smith College, to earn an MSW, he visited the Austen Riggs Center ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Major Depressive Disorder
Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive depression (mood), low mood, low self-esteem, and anhedonia, loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Introduced by a group of US clinicians in the mid-1970s, the term was adopted by the American Psychiatric Association for this syndrome, symptom cluster under mood disorders in the 1980 version of the ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (DSM-III), and has become widely used since. The disorder causes the second-most years lived with disability, after low back pain, lower back pain. The diagnosis of major depressive disorder is based on the person's reported experiences, behavior reported by family or friends, and a mental status examination. There is no laboratory test for the disorder, but testing may be done to rule out physical conditions that can cause similar symptoms. The most common time o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
