American Literature and the Destruction of Knowledge

American Literature and the Destruction of Knowledge PDF Author: Ronald E. Martin
Publisher: Durham : Duke University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
This challenging study of a number of American writers belongs in the tradition of the history-of-ideas approach to literary history. It offers an analysis of American literary developments and the relationship between writers and the philosophical and social thought of their times. Martin examines the works of Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Crane, Frost, Pound, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Stevens, Williams, and several others with a sharp eye for the artistic consequences of changing epistemological assumptions and for the connection of ideas and form. ISBN 0-8223-1125-9: $29.95.

American Literature and the Destruction of Knowledge

American Literature and the Destruction of Knowledge PDF Author: Ronald E. Martin
Publisher: Durham : Duke University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Get Book

Book Description
This challenging study of a number of American writers belongs in the tradition of the history-of-ideas approach to literary history. It offers an analysis of American literary developments and the relationship between writers and the philosophical and social thought of their times. Martin examines the works of Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Crane, Frost, Pound, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Stevens, Williams, and several others with a sharp eye for the artistic consequences of changing epistemological assumptions and for the connection of ideas and form. ISBN 0-8223-1125-9: $29.95.

Burning the Books

Burning the Books PDF Author: Richard Ovenden
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674241207
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The director of the famed Bodleian Libraries at Oxford narrates the global history of the willful destruction—and surprising survival—of recorded knowledge over the past three millennia. Libraries and archives have been attacked since ancient times but have been especially threatened in the modern era. Today the knowledge they safeguard faces purposeful destruction and willful neglect; deprived of funding, libraries are fighting for their very existence. Burning the Books recounts the history that brought us to this point. Richard Ovenden describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the UK Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts—political, religious, and cultural—and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process. More than simply repositories for knowledge, libraries and archives inspire and inform citizens. In preserving notions of statehood recorded in such historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, libraries support the state itself. By preserving records of citizenship and records of the rights of citizens as enshrined in legal documents such as the Magna Carta and the decisions of the US Supreme Court, they support the rule of law. In Burning the Books, Ovenden takes a polemical stance on the social and political importance of the conservation and protection of knowledge, challenging governments in particular, but also society as a whole, to improve public policy and funding for these essential institutions.

Reader's Guide to Literature in English

Reader's Guide to Literature in English PDF Author: Mark Hawkins-Dady
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135314179
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1024

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Book Description
Reader's Guide Literature in English provides expert guidance to, and critical analysis of, the vast number of books available within the subject of English literature, from Anglo-Saxon times to the current American, British and Commonwealth scene. It is designed to help students, teachers and librarians choose the most appropriate books for research and study.

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books PDF Author: Fernando Báez
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Examines the many reasons and motivations for the destruction of books throughout history, citing specific acts from the smashing of ancient Sumerian tablets to the looting of libraries in post-war Iraq.

The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture

The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture PDF Author: Heike Schaefer
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030225453
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This essay collection explores the cultural functions the printed book performs in the digital age. It examines how the use of and attitude toward the book form have changed in light of the digital transformation of American media culture. Situated at the crossroads of American studies, literary studies, book studies, and media studies, these essays show that a sustained focus on the medial and material formats of literary communication significantly expands our accustomed ways of doing cultural studies. Addressing the changing roles of authors, publishers, and readers while covering multiple bookish formats such as artists’ books, bestselling novels, experimental fiction, and zines, this interdisciplinary volume introduces readers to current transatlantic conversations on the history and future of the printed book.

Parlor Radical

Parlor Radical PDF Author: Jean Pfaelzer
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN: 0822974983
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Rebecca Harding Davis was a prominent author of radical social fiction during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In stories that combine realism with sentimentalism, Davis confronted a wide range of contemporary American issues, giving voice to working women, prostitutes, wives seeking divorce, celibate utopians, and female authors. Davis broke down distinctions between the private and the public worlds, distinctions that trapped women in the ideology of domesticity. By engaging current strategies in literary hermeneutics with a strong sense of historical radicalism in the Gilded Age, Jean Pfaelzer reads Davis through the public issues that she forcefully inscribed in her fiction. In this study, Davis's realistic narratives actively construct a coherent social work, not in a fictional vacuum but in direct engagement with the explosive movements of social change from the Civil War through the turn of the century.

Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin

Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin PDF Author: Robert Faggen
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472087471
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
A revealing look at Darwin's influence on the American poet Robert Frost

Still the New World

Still the New World PDF Author: Philip Fisher
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674838598
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
A provocative new way of accounting for the spirit of literary tradition, Still the New World makes a persuasive argument against the reduction of literature to identity questions of race, gender, and ethnicity.

The Metaphysics of Sound in Wallace Stevens

The Metaphysics of Sound in Wallace Stevens PDF Author: Anca Rosu
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817358862
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Demonstrates that Wallace Stevens's experimentation with sound is not only essential to his poetics but also profoundly linked to the pragmatist ideas that informed his way of thinking about language.

Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture

Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture PDF Author: John Hay
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316997421
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description
The idea of America has always encouraged apocalyptic visions. The 'American Dream' has not only imagined the prospect of material prosperity; it has also imagined the end of the world. 'Final forecasts' constitute one of America's oldest literary genres, extending from the eschatological theology of the New England Puritans to the revolutionary discourse of the early republic, the emancipatory rhetoric of the Civil War, the anxious fantasies of the atomic age, and the doomsday digital media of today. For those studying the history of America, renditions of the apocalypse are simply unavoidable. This book brings together two dozen essays by prominent scholars that explore the meanings of apocalypse across different periods, regions, genres, registers, modes, and traditions of American literature and culture. It locates the logic and rhetoric of apocalypse at the very core of American literary history.