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What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved
John Mullan · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorPoetics
Aristotle · 144 pages
One of the first books written on what is now called aesthetics. Although parts are lost (e.g., comedy), it has been very influential in western thought, such as the part on tragedy.
How Fiction Works
James Wood · 273 pages
Provides a somewhat academic approach to a discussion of the main elements of fiction using examples (good and bad) from literature.
Talking About Detective Fiction
P.D. James · 179 pages
In a perfect marriage of author and subject, P. D. James--one of the most widely admired writers of detective fiction at work today--gives us a personal, lively, illuminating exploration of the human appetite for mystery and mayhem, and of those writers who have satisfied it.P. D. James examines the genre from top to bottom, beginning with the mysteries at the hearts of such novels as Charles Dick
An Experiment in Criticism
C.S. Lewis · 142 pages
"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' experiment consists in rever
Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits
Jack Murnighan · 374 pages
Feel bad about not reading or not enjoying the so-called great books? Don't sweat it, it's not your fault. Did anyone tell you that Anna Karenina is a beach read, that Dickens is hilarious, that the Iliad's battle scenes rival Hollywood's for gore, or that Joyce is at his best when he's talking about booze, sex, or organ meats? Writer and professor Jack Murnighan says it's time to give literature
Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds
Harold Bloom · 832 pages
What is genius? It is the trait, says Harold Bloom, of standing both of and above an age, the ancient principle that recognizes and hallows the God within us, and the gift of breathing life into what is best in every living person. Now, in a monumental achievement of scholarship, America's preeminent literary critic presents an unprecedented celebration of one hundred of the most creative literary
Aspects of the Novel
E.M. Forster · 176 pages
The Clark Lectures, sponsored by Trinity College of the University of Cambridge, have had a long and distinguished history and have featured remarks by some of England's most important literary minds. Leslie Stephen, T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, William Empson and I.A. Richards have all given celebrated and widely influential talks as the keynote speaker. One of the Lectures' most important mileston
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read
Pierre Bayard · 208 pages
Offers advice to people on how to talk about books they have not read, including books they have skimmed, heard about, or read and forgotten, analyzes situations in which people might find themselves talking about books they have not read, and includes recommendations on how to resolve such social dilemmas.
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines
Thomas C. Foster · 325 pages
What does it mean when a fictional hero takes a journey?. Shares a meal? Gets drenched in a sudden rain shower? Often, there is much more going on in a novel or poem than is readily visible on the surface—a symbol, maybe, that remains elusive, or an unexpected twist on a character—and there's that sneaking suspicion that the deeper meaning of a literary text keeps escaping you.In this practical an
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Toni Morrison · 91 pages
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 dis
The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts
David Lodge · 240 pages
"The articles with which David Lodge entertained and enlightened readers of the Independent on Sunday and The Washington Post are 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, Magical Realism and Symbolism, and each topic is illustrated by a passag
A Reader's Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose
B.R. Myers · 149 pages
Including: A response to critics, and: Ten rules for "serious" writers, the author continues his fight on behalf of the American reader, arguing against pretension in so-called "literary" fiction, naming names and exposing the literary status quo.
The Pleasure of the Text
Roland Barthes · 67 pages
"What is it that we do when we enjoy a text? What is the pleasure of reading? The French critic and theorist Roland Barthes's answers to these questions constitute "perhaps for the first time in the history of criticism ... not only a poetics of reading ... but a much more difficult achievement, an erotics of reading ... Like filings which gather to form a figure in a magnetic field, the parts and
My Life in Middlemarch
Rebecca Mead · 293 pages
"A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth--Middlemarch-- and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories."--From publisher description. "Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, regarded by many as the gr
For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction
Alain Robbe-Grillet · 175 pages
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts
Milan Kundera · 176 pages
Supernatural Horror in Literature
H.P. Lovecraft · 106 pages
Great modern American supernaturalist brilliantly surveys history of genre to 1930s, summarizing, evaluating scores of books, including works by Poe, Bierce, M.R. James, "Monk" Lewis, many others. Praised by critics as diverse as Edmund Wilson and Vincent Starrett. New introduction by E. F. Bleiler
This Craft of Verse
Jorge Luis Borges · 160 pages
**From Library Journal:** For Borges (1899-1986), the central fact of life was the existence of words and their potential as building blocks of poetry. In this series of six long-forgotten lectures given at Harvard more than 30 years ago, he insists that reading (in English, primarily) gave him more pleasure than writing. Most of his examples are taken from English-speaking writers, such as Shakes
13 Ways of Looking at the Novel
Jane Smiley · 591 pages
Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling novelist Jane Smiley celebrates the novel--and takes us on an exhilarating tour through one hundred of them--in this seductive and immensely rewarding literary tribute.In her inimitable style--exuberant, candid, opinionated--Smiley explores the power of the novel, looking at its history and variety, its cultural impact, and just how it works its magic. She inv