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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/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 Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle's Poetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Art of the Novel'
"Every novelist's work contains an implicit vision of the history of the novel, an idea of what the novel is," Kundera writes. "I have tried to express here the idea of the novel that is inherent in my own novels." Kundera brilliantly examines the work of such important and diverse figures as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Diderot, Flaubert, Tolstoy, and Musil. He is especially penetrating on "perhaps the least known of all the great novelists of our time," Hermann Broch, and his exploration of the world of Kafka's novels vividly reveals the comic terror of Kafka's bureaucratized universe. Kundera's discussion of his own work includes his views on the role of historical events in fiction, the meaning of action, and the creation of character in the postpsychological novel. His reflections on the state of the modem European novel are as witty, original, and far-reaching as his fiction. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts'
The articles with which David Lodge entertained and enlightened readers of the Independent on Sunday for fifty weeks between 1991 and 1992 he has now revised, expanded and collected together in book form. The art of fiction is considered under a wide range of headings, such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Time-shift, the Sense of Place, and Symbolism. Each topic is illustrated by a short passage or two taken from classic and modern fiction, extending from Laurence Sterne to J.D. Salinger, from Jane Austen to Fay Weldon, from Charles Dickens to Martin Amis. David Lodge takes these passages apart and puts them together again with the expertise of a novelist, critic and teacher. Technical terms and lucidly explained and their application examined, in the literary-critical equivalent of slow-motion action replays of some of the best writing in the English language. To throw further light on a given topic the author sometimes refers directly, and revealingly, to his own experience of writing fiction. This book is essential reading for students of literature, aspiring writers, and anyone who enjoys literary fiction and would like to understand better how it works. [via]
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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: 'The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays'
These essays reveal Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975)known in the West largely through his studies of Rabelais and Dostoevskyas a philosopher of language, a cultural historian, and a major theoretician of the novel. The Dialogic Imagination presents, in superb English translation, four selections from Voprosy literatury i estetiki (Problems of literature and esthetics), published in Moscow in 1975. The volume also contains a lengthy introduction to Bakhtin and his thought and a glossary of terminology.
Bakhtin uses the category "novel" in a highly idiosyncratic way, claiming for it vastly larger territory than has been traditionally accepted. For him, the novel is not so much a genre as it is a force, "novelness," which he discusses in "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse." Two essays, "Epic and Novel" and "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," deal with literary history in Bakhtin's own unorthodox way. In the final essay, he discusses literature and language in general, which he sees as stratified, constantly changing systems of subgenres, dialects, and fragmented "languages" in battle with one another.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Double Invention of Komo'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Experiment in Criticism'
Professor Lewis believed that literature exists above all for the joy of the reader and that books should be judged by the kind of reading they invite. He doubted the use of strictly evaluative criticism, especially its condemnations. Literary criticism is traditionally employed in judging books, and 'bad taste' is thought of as a taste for bad books. Professor Lewis's experiment consists in reversing the process, and judging literature itself by the way men read it. He defined a good book as one which can be read in a certain way, a bad book as one which can only be read in another. He was therefore mainly preoccupied with the notion of good reading: and he showed that this, in its surrender to the work on which it is engaged, has something in common with love, with moral action, and with intellectual achievement. In good reading we should be concerned less in altering our own opinions than in entering fully into the opinions of others; 'in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself'. As with all that Professor Lewis wrote, the arguments are stimulating and the examples apt. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds'
From the Bible to Ralph Ellison, America's most prominent and bestselling literary critic takes an enlightening look at the concept of genius through the ages in a celebration of the greatest creative writers of all time. 50 photos. [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: 'How Proust Can Change Your Life'
This is a genius-level piece of writing that manages to blend literary biography with self-help and tongue-in-cheek with the profound. The quirky, early 1900s French author Marcel Proust acts as the vessel for surprisingly impressive nuggets of wisdom on down-to-earth topics such as why you should never sleep with someone on the first date, how to protect yourself against lower back pain, and how to cope with obnoxious neighbors. Here's proof that our ancestors had just as much insight as the gurus du jour and perhaps a lot more wit. De Botton simultaneously pokes fun at the self-help movement and makes a significant contribution to its archives. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How Proust Can Change Your Life : Not a Novel'
This is a genius-level piece of writing that manages to blend literary biography with self-help and tongue-in-cheek with the profound. The quirky, early 1900s French author Marcel Proust acts as the vessel for surprisingly impressive nuggets of wisdom on down-to-earth topics such as why you should never sleep with someone on the first date, how to protect yourself against lower back pain, and how to cope with obnoxious neighbors. Here's proof that our ancestors had just as much insight as the gurus du jour and perhaps a lot more wit. De Botton simultaneously pokes fun at the self-help movement and makes a significant contribution to its archives. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Read and Why'
Harold Bloom's urgency in How to Read and Why may have much to do with his age. He brackets his combative, inspiring manual with the news that he is nearing 70 and hasn't time for the mediocre. (One doubts that he ever did.) Nor will he countenance such fashionable notions as the death of the author or abide "the vagaries of our current counter-Puritanism" let alone "ideological cheerleading." Successively exploring the short story, poetry, the novel, and drama, Bloom illuminates both the how and why of his title and points us in all the right directions: toward the Romantics because they "startle us out of our sleep-of-death into a more capacious sense of life"; toward Austen, James, Proust; toward Thomas Mann, Toni Morrison, and Cormac McCarthy; toward Cervantes and Shakespeare (but of course!), Ibsen and Oscar Wilde.
How should we read? Slowly, with love, openness, and with our inner ear cocked. Then we should reread, reread, reread, and do so aloud as often as possible. "As a boy of eight," he tells us, "I would walk about chanting Housman's and William Blake's lyrics to myself, and I still do, less frequently yet with undiminished fervor." And why should we engage in this apparently solitary activity? To increase our wit and imagination, our sense of intimacy--in short, our entire consciousness--and also to heal our pain. "Until you become yourself," Bloom avers, "what benefit can you be to others." So much for reading as an escape from the self!
Still, many of this volume's pleasures may indeed be selfish. The author is at his best when he is thinking aloud and anew, and his material offers him--and therefore us--endless opportunities for discovery. Bloom cherishes poetry because it is "a prophetic mode" and fiction for its wisdom. Intriguingly, he fears more for the fate of the latter: "Novels require more readers than poems do, a statement so odd that it puzzles me, even as I agree with it." We must, he adjures, crusade against its possible extinction and read novels "in the coming years of the third millennium, as they were read in the eighteenth and nineteenth century: for aesthetic pleasure and for spiritual insight."
Bloom is never heavy, since his vision quest contains a healthy love of irony--Jedediah Purdy, take note: "Strip irony away from reading, and it loses at once all discipline and all surprise." And this supreme critic makes us want to equal his reading prowess because he writes as well as he reads; his epigrams are equal to his opinions. He is also a master allusionist and quoter. His section on Hedda Gabler is preceded by three extraordinary statements, two from Ibsen, who insists, "There must be a troll in what I write." Who would not want to proceed? Of course, Bloom can also accomplish his goal by sheer obstinacy. As far as he is concerned, Don Quixote may have been the first novel but it remains to this day the best one. Is he perhaps tweaking us into reading this gigantic masterwork by such bald overstatement? Bloom knows full well that a prophet should stop at nothing to get his belief and love across, and throughout How to Read and Why he is as unstinting as the visionary company he adores. --Kerry Fried [via]
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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: '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: 'The Madwoman in the Attic'
This pathbreaking book of feminist criticism is now reissued with a substantial new introduction by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar that reveals the origins of their revolutionary realization in the 1970s that "the personal was the political, the sexual was the textual". [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination'
This pathbreaking book of feminist criticism is now reissued with a substantial new introduction by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar that reveals the origins of their revolutionary realization in the 1970s that "the personal was the political, the sexual was the textual". [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: 'On Poetry and Style'
Contains the 'Poetics' and the first twelve chapters of the 'Rhetoric, Book III'. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Orientalism'
For generations now, Edward W. Said's "Orientalism" has defined our understanding of colonialism and empire, and this "Penguin Modern Classics" edition contains a preface written by Said shortly before his death in 2003. In this highly-acclaimed work, Edward Said surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, considering orientalism as a powerful European ideological creation - a way for writers, philosophers and colonial administrators to deal with the 'otherness' of eastern culture, customs and beliefs. He traces this view through the writings of Homer, Nerval and Flaubert, Disraeli and Kipling, whose imaginative depictions have greatly contributed to the West's romantic and exotic picture of the Orient. Drawing on his own experiences as an Arab Palestinian living in the West, Said examines how these ideas can be a reflection of European imperialism and racism. Edward W. Said (1935-2003) was a Palestinian-American cultural critic and author, born in Jerusalem and educated in Egypt and the United States. His other books include "The Question of Palestine", "Culture and Imperialism" and "Out of Place: A Memoir". If you enjoyed "Orientalism", you might like Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth", also available in "Penguin Modern Classics". "Stimulating, elegant and pugnacious". ("Observer"). "Beautifully patterned and passionately argued". ("New Statesman"). "Very exciting ...his case is not merely persuasive, but conclusive". (John Leonard, "New York Times"). "Magisterial". (Terry Eagleton). [via]
› 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: '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: 'Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books'
An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color." Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity," she writes.
Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom," she writes. In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rhetoric of Fiction'
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Rhetoric of Irony'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Rise of the Novel'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Seven Types of Ambiguity'
First published in 1930, Seven Types of Ambiguity has long been recognized as a landmark in the history of English literary criticism.
Revised twice since it first appeared, it has remained one of the most widely read and quoted works of literary analysis.More editions of Seven Types of Ambiguity:
› 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: 'The Uses of Enchantment : The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales'
Wicked stepmothers and beautiful princesses ...magic forests and enchanted towers ...little pigs and big bad wolves ...Fairy tales have been an integral part of childhood for hundreds of years. But what do they really mean? In this award-winning work of criticism, renowned psychoanalyst Dr Bruno Bettelheim presents a thought provoking and stimulating exploration of the best-known fairy stories. He reveals the true content of the stories and shows how children can use them to cope with their baffling emotions and anxieties. [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: 'Genios/genius: Un Mosaico De Cien Mentes Creativas Y Ejemplares'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Leer 'Lolita' En Teheran / Reading Lolita In Teheran'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Leer Lolita En Teheran'
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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: 'Kinder Brauchen Marchen'
Diese Augen! So schwarz wie die schwärzesten Kohle-Stücke und so tief wie der tiefste Waldsee. Überhaupt sieht das kleine Mädchen auf dem Buchumschlag aus wie Schneewittchen. Oder wie ein Kind, das Schneewittchen liebt.
Denn alle Kinder lieben Märchen. Noch mehr: Alle Kinder brauchen Märchen. Dafür plädierte Bruno Bettelheim seit Mitte der siebziger Jahre mit großer Überzeugungskraft. Er mußte es wissen: Bettelheim, 1903 in Wien geboren, emigrierte 1939 in die USA, war dort Professor für Erziehungswissenschaften, Psychologie und Psychiatrie an der Universität Chicago und einer der bekanntesten Kinderpsychologen. Er starb 1990. In deutscher Sprache erschien sein vielfach rezipiertes Buch Kinder brauchen Märchen erstmals 1977.
Bettelheims Erfahrung nach finden Kinder aller Entwicklungsstufen mehr Gefallen an Volksmärchen als an jeder anderen Art von Kindergeschichten. Der Frage, warum das Märchen so bezeichnend für das Innenleben des Kindes ist, ging Bettelheim nach; dabei wurde ihm mehr und mehr klar, daß das Märchen in einem viel tieferen Sinn als jede andere Lektüre dort einsetzt, wo sich das Kind in seiner seelischen und emotionalen Existenz befindet.
Seine Analysen einzelner Märchen und die Einbettung in ein allgemeines Verständnis für das Kind sind mittlerweile zu einem Standardwerk geworden, das nicht nur für Pädagogen, sondern auch für Eltern aufschlußreich ist. Und wie wichtig die richtige Lektüre in der Kinderzeit ist, betonte bereits Friedrich Schiller: "Tiefere Bedeutung liegt in dem Märchen meiner Kinderjahre als in der Wahrheit, die das Leben lehrt." --Lilli Belek [via]
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