This Thing We Call Literature
Title | This Thing We Call Literature PDF eBook |
Author | Arthur Krystal |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | 192 |
Release | 2016-02-26 |
Genre | Literary Collections |
ISBN | 0190272392 |
In his fourth book of essays, acclaimed cultural critic Arthur Krystal surveys the world of letters in its academic, literary, and populist incarnations--just to make sure those divisions still apply. What he finds is that the ground has shifted. With Lionel Trilling at his back, Krystal casts a cold eye on contemporary culture and discerns a lack of discrimination between the truly great and the merely good, and the fairly good and just plain bad. Critical but not angst-ridden, he deplores tunnel vision on both sides of the culture wars. Presumptive cultural boundaries have no place here. Krystal admires Bob Dylan and Elmore Leonard without including them in a purely literary pantheon. He endorses the Great Books without necessarily voting the Republican ticket. In essays about the meaning of the novel, the role of music in poetry, genre fiction vs. literary fiction, the contributions of the superlative critic Erich Auerbach, and the strange alliance of neurology and aesthetics, as well as in lighter pieces about reviewing and list-making, Krystal brings his own brand of discriminating intelligence to a spectrum of received opinions whose flaws and cracks otherwise go unnoticed.
This Thing Called Literature
Title | This Thing Called Literature PDF eBook |
Author | Andrew Bennett |
Publisher | Routledge |
Total Pages | 140 |
Release | 2015-02-11 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1317698282 |
What is this thing called literature? Why should we study it? And how? Relating literature to topics such as dreams, politics, life, death, the ordinary and the uncanny, this beautifully written book establishes a sense of why and how literature is an exciting and rewarding subject to study. Bennett and Royle delicately weave an essential love of literature into an account of what literary texts do, how they work and what sort of questions and ideas they provoke. The book’s three parts reflect the fundamental components of studying literature: reading, thinking and writing. The authors use helpful, familiar examples throughout, offering rich reflections on the question ‘What is literature?’ and on what they term ‘creative reading’. Bennett and Royle’s lucid and friendly style encourages a deep engagement with literary texts. This book is not only an essential guide to the study of literature, but an eloquent defence of the discipline.
A New Literary History of America
Title | A New Literary History of America PDF eBook |
Author | Greil Marcus |
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Total Pages | 1129 |
Release | 2012-05-07 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0674064100 |
America is a nation making itself up as it goes alongÑa story of discovery and invention unfolding in speeches and images, letters and poetry, unprecedented feats of scholarship and imagination. In these myriad, multiform, endlessly changing expressions of the American experience, the authors and editors of this volume find a new American history. In more than two hundred original essays, A New Literary History of America brings together the nationÕs many voices. From the first conception of a New World in the sixteenth century to the latest re-envisioning of that world in cartoons, television, science fiction, and hip hop, the book gives us a new, kaleidoscopic view of what ÒMade in AmericaÓ means. Literature, music, film, art, history, science, philosophy, political rhetoricÑcultural creations of every kind appear in relation to each other, and to the time and place that give them shape. The meeting of minds is extraordinary as T. J. Clark writes on Jackson Pollock, Paul Muldoon on Carl Sandburg, Camille Paglia on Tennessee Williams, Sarah Vowell on Grant WoodÕs American Gothic, Walter Mosley on hard-boiled detective fiction, Jonathan Lethem on Thomas Edison, Gerald Early on Tarzan, Bharati Mukherjee on The Scarlet Letter, Gish Jen on Catcher in the Rye, and Ishmael Reed on Huckleberry Finn. From Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop to Philip Roth and Toni Morrison, from Alexander Graham Bell and Stephen Foster to Alcoholics Anonymous, Life, Chuck Berry, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ronald Reagan, this is America singing, celebrating itself, and becoming something altogether different, plural, singular, new. Please visit www.newliteraryhistory.com for more information.
The Event of Literature
Title | The Event of Literature PDF eBook |
Author | Terry Eagleton |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Total Pages | 265 |
Release | 2012-05-29 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 0300178816 |
Offers a thorough examination of the philosophy of literature, looking at the place of literature in human culture, what literature can be defined as and much more.
Distant Reading
Title | Distant Reading PDF eBook |
Author | Franco Moretti |
Publisher | Verso Books |
Total Pages | 234 |
Release | 2013-06-04 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 1781684812 |
How does a literary historian end up thinking in terms of z-scores, principal component analysis, and clustering coefficients? The essays in Distant Reading led to a new and often contested paradigm of literary analysis. In presenting them here Franco Moretti reconstructs his intellectual trajectory, the theoretical influences over his work, and explores the polemics that have often developed around his positions. From the evolutionary model of "Modern European Literature," through the geo-cultural insights of "Conjectures of World Literature" and "Planet Hollywood," to the quantitative findings of "Style, inc." and the abstract patterns of "Network Theory, Plot Analysis," the book follows two decades of conceptual development, organizing them around the metaphor of "distant reading," that has come to define-well beyond the wildest expectations of its author-a growing field of unorthodox literary studies.
Mimesis
Title | Mimesis PDF eBook |
Author | Erich Auerbach |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | |
Release | 1991 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9780691012698 |
The Encyclopaedia Britannica
Title | The Encyclopaedia Britannica PDF eBook |
Author | Hugh Chisholm |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 1016 |
Release | 1911 |
Genre | Encyclopedias and dictionaries |
ISBN |