The Lives of Literature : : Reading, Teaching, Knowing / / Arnold Weinstein.

Mixing passion and humor, a personal work of literary criticism that demonstrates how the greatest books illuminate our livesWhy do we read literature? For Arnold Weinstein, the answer is clear: literature allows us to become someone else. Literature changes us by giving us intimate access to an ast...

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Bibliographic Details
Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
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Place / Publishing House:Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2022]
©2021
Year of Publication:2022
Language:English
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Physical Description:1 online resource (352 p.) :; 3 b/w illus.
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Other title:Frontmatter --
Contents --
Acknowledgments --
Introduction: The Lives of Literature: Reading, Teaching, Knowing --
1. My Voyage Out --
2. Distance Learning: Yesterday and Today --
3. The Three R’s --
4. Literature and the Cost of Knowing --
5. Literature’s Map of Human Dimensions --
6. Gaffes . . . and Worse --
Conclusion: Delta Autumn --
Bibliography --
Index
Summary:Mixing passion and humor, a personal work of literary criticism that demonstrates how the greatest books illuminate our livesWhy do we read literature? For Arnold Weinstein, the answer is clear: literature allows us to become someone else. Literature changes us by giving us intimate access to an astonishing variety of other lives, experiences, and places across the ages. Reflecting on a lifetime of reading, teaching, and writing, The Lives of Literature explores, with passion, humor, and whirring intellect, a professor’s life, the thrills and traps of teaching, and, most of all, the power of literature to lead us to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the worlds we inhabit.As an identical twin, Weinstein experienced early the dislocation of being mistaken for another person—and of feeling that he might be someone other than he had thought. In vivid readings elucidating the classics of authors ranging from Sophocles to James Joyce and Toni Morrison, he explores what we learn by identifying with their protagonists, including those who, undone by wreckage and loss, discover that all their beliefs are illusions. Weinstein masterfully argues that literature’s knowing differs entirely from what one ends up knowing when studying mathematics or physics or even history: by entering these characters’ lives, readers acquire a unique form of knowledge—and come to understand its cost.In The Lives of Literature, a master writer and teacher shares his love of the books that he has taught and been taught by, showing us that literature matters because we never stop discovering who we are.
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9780691232324
9783110993899
9783110994810
9783110993752
9783110993738
9783110739121
DOI:10.1515/9780691232324?locatt=mode:legacy
Access:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: Arnold Weinstein.