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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays'
Northrop Frye was one of the most influential 20th-century literary scholars, and Anatomy of Criticism is his most influential book. In this rigorous and readable work of scholarship, Frye feistily champions literary criticism's legitimacy and independence--both by differentiating criticism from other academic disciplines, and by banishing any conception of the critic as "parasite or jackal" (this latter view, Frye notes, is still quite popular, "especially among artists"). The book began as something quite different, and took nearly a decade to write. Frye published his first major work--Fearful Symmetry, on the Romantic poet William Blake--in 1947 and had set out to produce a second tome on Edmund Spencer. But the critical insights accumulating in his fertile mind were too insistent, so the book on Spencer became Anatomy of Criticism.
Anatomy of Criticism remains provocative and enlightening in no small part because of its ambitious breadth. Frye's comprehension of literary history is breathtaking, as is the complexity but also the clarity of his thought. Four chapters treat historical, ethical, archetypal, and rhetorical modes of criticism, bracketed by a "Polemical Introduction" and a "Tentative Conclusion." Frye's ultimate aim is to confirm for the reader that literary criticism is a science in its own right: "Criticism," he says, "is to art what history is to action and philosophy is to wisdom.... And just as there is nothing which the philosopher cannot consider philosophically, and nothing which the historian cannot consider historically, so the critic should be able to construct and dwell in a conceptual universe of his own." Rather than promote any particular critical approach over another, he tries to construct a theoretical structure sturdy and expansive enough to accommodate and inter-relate a broad range of critical approaches. --Russell Prather [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays'
Northrop Frye was one of the most influential 20th-century literary scholars, and Anatomy of Criticism is his most influential book. In this rigorous and readable work of scholarship, Frye feistily champions literary criticism's legitimacy and independence--both by differentiating criticism from other academic disciplines, and by banishing any conception of the critic as "parasite or jackal" (this latter view, Frye notes, is still quite popular, "especially among artists"). The book began as something quite different, and took nearly a decade to write. Frye published his first major work--Fearful Symmetry, on the Romantic poet William Blake--in 1947 and had set out to produce a second tome on Edmund Spencer. But the critical insights accumulating in his fertile mind were too insistent, so the book on Spencer became Anatomy of Criticism.
Anatomy of Criticism remains provocative and enlightening in no small part because of its ambitious breadth. Frye's comprehension of literary history is breathtaking, as is the complexity but also the clarity of his thought. Four chapters treat historical, ethical, archetypal, and rhetorical modes of criticism, bracketed by a "Polemical Introduction" and a "Tentative Conclusion." Frye's ultimate aim is to confirm for the reader that literary criticism is a science in its own right: "Criticism," he says, "is to art what history is to action and philosophy is to wisdom.... And just as there is nothing which the philosopher cannot consider philosophically, and nothing which the historian cannot consider historically, so the critic should be able to construct and dwell in a conceptual universe of his own." Rather than promote any particular critical approach over another, he tries to construct a theoretical structure sturdy and expansive enough to accommodate and inter-relate a broad range of critical approaches. --Russell Prather [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle on Poetics'
Aristotle's much-translated On Poetics is the earliest and arguably the best treatment that we possess of tragedy as a literary form. The late Seth Benardete and Michael Davis have translated it anew with a view to rendering Aristotle's text into English as precisely as possible. A literal translation has long been needed, for in order to excavate the argument of On Poetics one has to attend not simply to what is said on the surface but also to the various puzzles, questions, and peculiarities that emerge only on the level of how Aristotle says what he says and thereby leads one to revise and deepen one's initial understanding of the intent of the argument. As On Poetics is about how tragedy ought to be composed, it should not be surprising that it turns out to be a rather artful piece of literature in its own right.
Benardete and Davis supplement their edition of On Poetics with extensive notes and appendices. They explain nuances of the original that elude translation, and they provide translations of passages found elsewhere in Aristotle's works as well as in those of other ancient authors that prove useful in thinking through the argument of On Poetics both in terms of its treatment of tragedy and in terms of its broader concerns. By following the connections Aristotle plots between On Poetics and his other works, readers will be in a position to appreciate the centrality of this work for his entire thought.
In an introduction that sketches the overall interpretation of On Poetics presented in hisThe Poetry of Philosophy (St. Augustine's Press, 1999; see p. 33 of this catalogue), Davis argues that, while On Poetics is certainly about tragedy, it has a further concern extending beyond poetry to the very structure of the human soul in its relation to what is, and that Aristotle reveals in the form of his argument the true character of human action. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle: Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle Poetics/Longinus on the Sublime/Demetrius on Style'
This volume brings together the three most influential ancient Greek treatises on literature. Aristotle's Poetics contains his treatment of Greek tragedy: its history, naturne, and conventions, with details on poetic diction. Stephen Halliwell makes this seminal work newly accessible with a reliable text and a translation that is both accurate and readable. His authoritative introduction traces the work's debt to earlier theorists (especially Plato), its distinctive argument, and the reasons behind its enduring relevance.
The essay On the Sublime, usually attributed to "Longinus" (identity uncertain), was probably composed in the first century CE; its subject is the appreciation of greatness ("the sublime") in writing, with analysis of illustrative passages ranging from Homer and Sappho to Plato. In this edition, Donald Russell has revised and newly annotated the text and translation by W. Hamilton Fyfe, and supplied a new introduction.
The treatise On Style, ascribed to an (again unidentifiable) Demetrius, was perhaps composed during the secod century BCE. It is notable particularly for its theory and analysis of four distinct styles (grand, elegant, plain, and forceful). Doreen Innes' fresh rendering of the work is based on the earlier Loeb translation by W. Rhys Roberts. Her new introduction and notes represent the latest scholarship.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle's on the Art of Poetry'
This book, "Aristotle, On the art of poetry (1920)", by Aristotle, Bywater, Ingram, 1840-1914, Murray Gilbert, is a replication of a book originally published before 1920. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible. This book was created using print-on-demand technology. Thank you for supporting classic literature. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle's Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle's Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aspects of the Novel'
There are all kinds of books out there purporting to explain that odd phenomenon the novel. Sometimes it's hard to know whom they're are for, exactly. Enthusiastic readers? Fellow academics? Would-be writers? Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster's 1927 treatise on the "fictitious prose work over 50,000 words" is, it turns out, for anyone with the faintest interest in how fiction is made. Open at random, and find your attention utterly sandbagged.
Forster's book is not really a book at all; rather, it's a collection of lectures delivered at Cambridge University on subjects as parboiled as "People," "The Plot," and "The Story." It has an unpretentious verbal immediacy thanks to its spoken origin and is written in the key of Aplogetic Mumble: "Those who dislike Dickens have an excellent case. He ought to be bad." Such gentle provocations litter these pages. How can you not read on? Forster's critical writing is so ridiculously plainspoken, so happily commonsensical, that we often forget to be intimidated by the rhetorical landscapes he so ably leads us through. As he himself points out in the introductory note, "Since the novel is itself often colloquial it may possibly withhold some of its secrets from the graver and grander streams of criticism, and may reveal them to backwaters and shallows."
And Forster does paddle into some unlikely eddies here. For instance, he seems none too gung ho about love in the novel: "And lastly, love. I am using this celebrated word in its widest and dullest sense. Let me be very dry and brief about sex in the first place." He really means in the first place. Like the narrator of a '50s hygiene film, Forster continues, dry and brief as anything, "Some years after a human being is born, certain changes occur in it..." One feels here the same-sexer having the last laugh, heartily.
Forster's brand of humanism has fallen from fashion in literary studies, yet it endures in fiction itself. Readers still love this author, even if they come to him by way of the multiplex. The durability of his work is, of course, the greatest raison d'être this book could have. It should have been titled How to Write Novels People Will Still Read in a Hundred Years. --Claire Dederer [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aspects of the Novel, and Related Writings'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'De Arte Poetica Liber'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Dictionary of Literary Terms'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory'
In the new edition of this work many of the 2000 terms it defines have completely revised entries, and there are several hundred new entries. The coverage of the dictionary has been expanded to cover literary theory and the critical developments that have grown up since the first edition of the book was published in 1976. Now, in addition to its informative entries on the language of literature and literary criticism, from Bascarole and courtesy books to sprung rhythm and Vorticism, the dictionary contains entries on theorietical topics from aporia to Yale School. Amongst these are Freudian and psychoanalytic criticism, formalism, grammatology, hermeneutics, post-modernism and structuralism. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Full of Life: A Biography of John Fante'
Unfamiliar with the works of John Fante? Sadly, you're not alone. While his few novels received critical acclaim, they went out of print quickly, and for most of his career Fante relied on Hollywood screenwriting to support both his family and his habits. Stephen Cooper has done a terrific job of uncovering Fante's life here, and more than anything, his biography makes the reader want to turn back to the writer's books (Ask the Dust, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, The Road to Los Angeles, The Brotherhood of the Grape, among others--all currently in print, courtesy of Black Sparrow Press). With elegant prose and painstaking detail, Cooper reveals a tortured man who once ended a letter with this telling statement: "Writing is a great joy, but the profession of writing is horrible." Beginning with Fante's family history--immigration, menial labor, heavy drinking, and financial instability--and ending with a final 17-month hospitalization, the roller coaster that was his life is both fascinating and exhausting. Even while his screenplay Full of Life achieved critical accolades, Fante referred to himself as "that Hollywood whore, that stinking sell-out artist," and with every increase in his paycheck he seemed to fall further into bitterness. Throughout the pages that link Fante's professional and personal lives, we're shown a proud grandpa, an unrepentant gambler and heavy-drinking diabetic, and above all, a tremendously talented writer who was always his own worst critic. Would he appreciate being rescued from obscurity? Hard to say: as he wrote to his son in the early '60s, "Success is too vague a challenge. Maybe failure is even better; certainly it is more beautiful." --Jill Lightner [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Glossary of Literary Terms'
First published in 1957, A Glossary of Literary Terms contains succinct essays on the terms used in discussing literature, literary history, and literary criticism. This text is an indispensable reference for students. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hamlet'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hamlet : Poem Unlimited'
In his New York Times bestseller Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom showed us how Shakespeare shaped human consciousness and addressed the question of authorship in Hamlet. In Hamlet: Poem Unlimited, our most celebrated critic turns his attention to a reading of the play itself and to Shakespeare's most enigmatic and memorable character.
Hamlet: Poem Unlimited is Bloom's attempt to uncover the mystery of both Prince Hamlet and the play itself, how both prince and drama are able to break through the conventions of theatrical mimesis and the representation of character, making us question the very nature of theatrical illusion. In twenty-five brief chapters, Bloom takes us through the major soliloquies, scenes, characters, and action of the play, to explore the enigma at the heart of the drama, that is central to its universal appeal.
Every reader of Shakespeare will delight in this step-by-step analysis by our most beloved critic. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Illuminations'
Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. Illuminations includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and Benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history.
Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin's life in dark times. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Is Heathcliff a Murderer?: Great Puzzles in Nineteenth-Century Literature'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Is Heathcliff a Murderer?: Puzzles in Nineteenth-Centry Fiction'
In this quirky and intriguing book, John Sutherland has conveniently gathered together thirty-four nagging little questions, puzzles, errors, and enigmas from some of the best-loved examples of Victorian fiction. Readers often have stumbled upon seeming mysteries in their favorite novels. Why, for example, is the plot of The Woman in White irrevocably flawed? (The timing of the crime is off.) Is the hero of George Eliot's Middlemarch illegitimate? (Probably, although he was later legitimized.) Why does the otherwise sensible Jane Eyre give in to a sudden and unexplained outburst of superstition? (Charlotte Bronte, in reality, had a similar experience.) What is the real reason we find The Picture of Dorian Gray so disturbing? (There is an overwhelming emphasis on the sense of smell.) These answers and more can all be found in John Sutherland's entertaining and maddening book.
When it comes to literary criticism there's really nothing quite like the joys of close reading and good-natured inquiry. This is the spirit in which Is Heathcliff A Murderer was conceived and executed. Rather than trying to catch great authors in mistakes, Sutherland usually turns up perfectly plausible reasons for the seeming anomalies.
Everyone who reads nineteenth-century novels will thoroughly enjoy John Sutherland's exploration of the seemingly unanswered, and each chapter is a direct link to one of Oxford's World's Classics. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lectures on Literature'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Lectures on Literature: British, French and German Writers'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Literary Language & Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages'
In this, his final book, Erich Auerbach writes, "My purpose is always to write history." Tracing the transformations of classical Latin rhetoric from late antiquity to the modern era, he explores major concerns raised in his Mimesis: the historical and social contexts in which writings were received, and issues of aesthetics, semantics, stylistics, and sociology that anticipate the concerns of the new historicism.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Literary Theory: An Introduction'
A concise, witty, and entertaining introduction to the seemingly impenetrable world of modern literary [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature'
A half-century after its translation into English, Erich Auerbach's Mimesis still stands as a monumental achievement in literary criticism. A brilliant display of erudition, wit, and wisdom, his exploration of how great European writers from Homer to Virginia Woolf depicted reality has taught generations how to read Western literature. This new expanded edition includes a substantial essay in introduction by Edward Said as well as an essay, never before translated into English, in which Auerbach responds to his critics. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Moronic Inferno'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mythologies'
L'Antiquité avait son Oedipe, le Grand Siècle son roi Soleil, et voilà que Barthes donne à la France de l'après-guerre ses nouveaux emblèmes : la DS Citroën, le Tour de France, le steak frites... Tous objets d'un culte bourgeois, ils deviennent de véritables mythes pour une société qui finit par se penser à travers eux. Mais si Barthes se penche avec la rigueur de l'ethnologue sur ces nouveaux mythes, c'est pour mieux en dénoncer les mécanismes : l'idéologie dominante ne s'inventerait ainsi des valeurs que pour légitimer des "normes bourgeoises" qui en manquent singulièrement...
Écrites quotidiennement de 1954 à 1956, ces mythologies déploient une écriture fine, cultivée et juste, à lire comme autant de petites chroniques savoureuses. Toutefois, on les retiendra avant tout pour l'actualité de leurs propos : sur le même modèle, on trouverait sans peine de nouvelles mythologies, qui ne seraient sans doute pas très éloignées de celles que Barthes, en son temps, mettait en évidence. --Karla Manuele [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mythologies'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On Poetry and Style'
Contains the 'Poetics' and the first twelve chapters of the 'Rhetoric, Book III'. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory'
This edition of an established dictionary of literary terms, is brought up-to-date by the inclusion of new terms from literary theory and structuralist, post-structuralist and deconstructuralist criticism. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination'
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison brings the genius of a master writer to this personal inquiry into the significance of African-Americans in the American literary imagination. Her goal, she states at the outset, is to "put forth an argument for extending the study of American literature...draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography and use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure, and close exploration as did the original charting of the New World--without the mandate for conquest."
Author of Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and other vivid portrayals of black American experience, Morrison ponders the effect that living in a historically racialized society has had on American writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She argues that race has become a metaphor, a way of referring to forces, events, and forms of social decay, economic division, and human panic. Her compelling point is that the central characteristics of American literature individualism, masculinity, the insistence upon innocence coupled to an obsession with figurations of death and hell--are responses to a dark and abiding Africanist presence.
Through her investigation of black characters, narrative strategies, and idiom in the fiction of white American writers, Morrison provides a daring perspective that is sure to alter conventional notions about American literature. She considers Willa Cather and the impact of race on concept and plot; turns to Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville to examine the black force that figures so significantly in the literature of early America; and discusses the implications of the Africanist presence at the heart of Huckleberry Finn. A final chapter on Ernest Hemingway is a brilliant exposition of the racial subtext that glimmers beneath the surface plots of his fiction.
Written with the artistic vision that has earned her a preeminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark will be avidly read by Morrison admirers as well as by students, critics, and scholars of American literature.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Poetics'
The original, Aristotle's short study of storytelling, written in the fourth century B.C., is the world's first critical book about the laws of literature. Sure, it's 2400 years old, but Aristotle's discussions--Unity of Plot, Reversal of the Situation, Character--though written in the context of ancient Greek Tragedy, Comedy and Epic Poetry, still apply to our modern literary forms. The book is quite short, and Aristotle illuminates his points with clear examples, making the Poetics perfectly readable, the better to impress people at parties when you say, "Of course, as Aristotle says..." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Poetics I'
Richard Janko's acclaimed translation of Aristotle's "Poetics" is accompanied by the most comprehensive commentary available in English that does not presume knowledge of the original Greek. Two other unique features are Janko's translations with notes of both the "Tractatus Coislinianus", which is argued to be a summary of the lost second book of the "Poetics", and fragments of Aristotle's "Dialogue On Poets", including recently discovered texts about catharsis, which appear in English for the first time. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Poetics I With the Tractatus Coislinianus: A Hypothetical Reconstruction of Poetics II'
Richard Janko's acclaimed translation of Aristotle's "Poetics" is accompanied by the most comprehensive commentary available in English that does not presume knowledge of the original Greek. Two other unique features are Janko's translations with notes of both the "Tractatus Coislinianus", which is argued to be a summary of the lost second book of the "Poetics", and fragments of Aristotle's "Dialogue On Poets", including recently discovered texts about catharsis, which appear in English for the first time. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poetics of Aristotle: Translation and Commentary'
Incorporating the best modern work on the Poetics, Halliwell's translation is aimed at those who want a reliable version of Aristotle's ideas along with concise and stimulating guidance. A running commentary explains the structure and detail of Aristotle's argument, attempts to provoke further thought about the work's strengths and weaknesses, and offers suggestions on relating the Poetics to later stages of literary theory and practice. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Poetics of Aristotle'
Classic work from the Ancient Greek philosopher, student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great, who laid down the foundations of Western philosophy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Por Que Leer Los Clasicos?'
Los clasicos son, para Italo Calvino (1923-1985), aquellos libros que nunca terminan de decir lo que tienen que decir, textos que «cuanto mas cree uno conocerlos de oidas, tanto mas nuevos, inesperados, ineditos resultan al leerlos de verdad». Y ese es el convencimiento que anima a Italo Calvino a comentar los «suyos», segun su criterio de que el clasico de cada uno «es aquel que no puede serte indiferente y que te sirve para definirte a ti mismo en relacion y quizas en contraste con el». Asi, mezclados en el tiempo y en la historia de la literatura universal, el lector descubre las lecturas de Italo Calvino. El resultado de todo ello es una obra que se ha convertido, a su vez, en un clasico. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson'
Vintage 1990 soft cover, perfect condition and ready to ship the same day! [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shakespeare: Invention'
"Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only Shakespeare's greatest originality but also the authentic cause of his perpetual pervasiveness." So Harold Bloom opines in his outrageously ambitious Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. This is a titanic claim. But then this is a titanic book, wrought by a latter-day critical colossus--and before Bloom is done with us, he has made us wonder whether his vision of Shakespeare's influence on the whole of our lives might not be simply the sober truth. Shakespeare is a feast of arguments and insights, written with engaging frankness and affecting immediacy. Bloom ranges through the Bard's plays in the probable order of their composition, relating play to play and character to character, maintaining all the while a shrewd grasp of Shakespeare's own burgeoning sensibility.
It is a long and fascinating itinerary, and one littered with thousands of sharp insights. Listen to Bloom on Romeo and Juliet: "The Nurse and Mercutio, both of them audience favorites, are nevertheless bad news, in different but complementary ways." On The Merchant of Venice: "To reduce him to contemporary theatrical terms, Shylock would be an Arthur Miller protagonist displaced into a Cole Porter musical, Willy Loman wandering about in Kiss Me Kate." On As You Like It: "Rosalind is unique in Shakespeare, perhaps indeed in Western drama, because it is so difficult to achieve a perspective upon her that she herself does not anticipate and share." Bloom even offers some belated vocational counseling to Falstaff, identifying him as an Elizabethan Mr. Chips: "Falstaff is more than skeptical, but he is too much of a teacher (his true vocation, more than highwayman) to follow skepticism out to its nihilistic borders, as Hamlet does."
In the end, it doesn't matter very much whether we agree with all or any of these ideas. What does matter is that Bloom's capacious book sends us hurrying back to some of the central texts of our civilization. "The ultimate use of Shakespeare," the author asserts, "is to let him teach you to think too well, to whatever truth you can sustain without perishing." Bloom himself has made excellent use of his hero's instruction, and now he teaches us all to do the same. --Daniel Hintzsche [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human'
"Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only Shakespeare's greatest originality but also the authentic cause of his perpetual pervasiveness." So Harold Bloom opines in his outrageously ambitious Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. This is a titanic claim. But then this is a titanic book, wrought by a latter-day critical colossus--and before Bloom is done with us, he has made us wonder whether his vision of Shakespeare's influence on the whole of our lives might not be simply the sober truth. Shakespeare is a feast of arguments and insights, written with engaging frankness and affecting immediacy. Bloom ranges through the Bard's plays in the probable order of their composition, relating play to play and character to character, maintaining all the while a shrewd grasp of Shakespeare's own burgeoning sensibility.
It is a long and fascinating itinerary, and one littered with thousands of sharp insights. Listen to Bloom on Romeo and Juliet: "The Nurse and Mercutio, both of them audience favorites, are nevertheless bad news, in different but complementary ways." On The Merchant of Venice: "To reduce him to contemporary theatrical terms, Shylock would be an Arthur Miller protagonist displaced into a Cole Porter musical, Willy Loman wandering about in Kiss Me Kate." On As You Like It: "Rosalind is unique in Shakespeare, perhaps indeed in Western drama, because it is so difficult to achieve a perspective upon her that she herself does not anticipate and share." Bloom even offers some belated vocational counseling to Falstaff, identifying him as an Elizabethan Mr. Chips: "Falstaff is more than skeptical, but he is too much of a teacher (his true vocation, more than highwayman) to follow skepticism out to its nihilistic borders, as Hamlet does."
In the end, it doesn't matter very much whether we agree with all or any of these ideas. What does matter is that Bloom's capacious book sends us hurrying back to some of the central texts of our civilization. "The ultimate use of Shakespeare," the author asserts, "is to let him teach you to think too well, to whatever truth you can sustain without perishing." Bloom himself has made excellent use of his hero's instruction, and now he teaches us all to do the same. --Daniel Hintzsche [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shakespeare's Bawdy'
When Shakespeare's plays were first performed, they were popular with everyone: they weren't classics yet or a requisite course to be suffered. The stories were good entertainment for the masses, with a bawdy streak a mile wide. Certainly Shakespeare's depth and insight into human nature was appreciated, but surely some came just for the dirt. Shakespeare's contemporaries didn't need a glossary to get the jokes, but we do. Thank goodness for Eric Partridge's dictionary of Elizabethan smut, so we can get the double-entendres, too. Thus, "hardening of one's brows" (The Winter's Tale) refers to being cuckolded, "laced mutton" (Two Gentleman of Verona) is a prostitute, "riggish" (Cleopatra) means lascivious, and "groping for trout in a peculiar river" (Measure for Measure) means copulating with a woman. With an essay on the sexual, homosexual, and nonsexual bawdy in Shakespeare, an index to the essay, and a full glossary of bawdry, Partridge puts the nudge and wink back in Shakespeare. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shakespeare's Bawdy: A Literary & Psychological Essay and a Comprehensive Glossary'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Six Memos for the Next Millenium'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Six Memos for the Next Millenium/the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1985-86'
Italo Calvino cast his lofty thoughts toward the pending millennium long before the rest of us. Now that the zeitgeist has caught up with him, it seems a good time to revisit his Six Memos for the Next Millennium, an investigation into the literary values that he wished to bequeath to future generations. Calvino, the author of Invisible Cities, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, and other postmodern fictional works, was to deliver these five "memos" (there was to be a sixth) as Harvard's Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1985-86, but he died before doing so. These lectures are dense, rigorous, and seemingly full of contradiction. The first is a paean to lightness (though "light like a bird," as Paul Valéry wrote, "and not like a feather"). Lightness is followed by quickness (without "presum[ing] to deny the pleasures of lingering"), exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity. The perfect antidote to writerly laziness. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Uses of Literature: Essays'
One comes away from this collection of intellectually playful essays...by Italy's foremost modern novelist...inspired to go back and reread the body of his fiction in the light of his reflections on literature. -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination'
Join Ursula K. Le Guin as she explores a broad array of subjects, ranging from Tolstoy, Twain, and Tolkien to women's shoes, beauty, and family life. With her customary wit, intelligence, and literary craftsmanship, she offers a diverse and highly engaging set of readings. The Wave in the Mind includes some of Le Guin's finest literary criticism, rare autobiographical writings, performance art pieces, and, most centrally, her reflections on the arts of writing and reading. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages'
Discussed and debated, revered and reviled, Bloom's tome reinvigorates and re-examines Western Literature, arguing against the politicization of reading. His erudite passion will encourage you to hurry and finish his book so you can pick up Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens once again to rediscover their original magic. In addition, his appendix listing of the "future" canon - the books today that will be timeless tomorrow - is sure to be the template for future debate. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Arte De La Novela / The Art of the Novel'
"La obra de cada novelista contiene una vision implicita de la historia de la novela, una idea de lo que es la novela; es esta idea de la novela, inherente a mis novelas, la ue he procurado dejar hablar." en estos siete textos relaativamente independientes, pero vinculados en un unico ensayo, Milan Kundera expone su concepcion personal de la novela europea. Uno de los textos esta dedicado a Hermann Broch, otro a Franz Kafka. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Canon Occidental'
El autor retoma la antigua idea del canon o catalogo de libros perceptivos, y propone un recorrido por la historia de la literatura occidental mediante 26 autores que el considera capitales, y que van desde Shakespeare hasta Dante, Cervantes, Joyce o Borges. Asi mismo reivindica la autonomia de la estetica y el placer de la lectura sin intenciones de redencion social, y basada en el puro goce intelectual. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Teatro Y Su Doble/the Theater And It's Double'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vidas Escritas'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'L'art Du Roman: Essai'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'La Poetique'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Illuminationen: Ausgew. Schriften'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lezioni Americane: Sei Proposte per Il Prossimo Millennio'
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