The Politically Incorrect Guide to English And American Literature

by Kantor, Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9781596980112
• ISBN10: 1596980117
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-11-30
• Publisher: Regnery Pub

Summary

The Politically Incorrect GuideT to English and American Literature exposes the PC professors and takes you on a fascinating tour through our great literature-in all its politically incorrect glory. Included: a syllabus and how-to guide to give yourself the English lit education you were denied in school.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Kantor is author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature and The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. in philosophy from Catholic University of America. Kantor has taught English literature and written for publications ranging from National Review Online to the Boston Globe. An avid Jane Austen fan, she is happily married and lives with her husband and son in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Why This Book Is Needed	xiii
Part I: What They Don't Want You to Learn from English Literature (An Introduction to the Canon, from Beowulf to Flannery O'Connor)	1	(186)
Old English Literature: The Age of Heroes	3	(20)
Beowulf: The hero and the poem
The Dream of the Rood
``This life on loan''
The Battle of Maldon
Medieval Literature: ``Here Is God's Plenty''	23	(26)
Middle English poetry
The politically incorrect world of the Middle Ages
The Canterbury Tales vs. The Handmaid's Tale
The dreary world of The Handmaid's Tale
The fecundity of medieval art
A pre-classical aesthetic
In the light of eternity
Christianity and freedom
Separation of church and state, medieval style
The argument from authority
The invention of chivalry
The Renaissance: Christian Humanism	49	(36)
Christopher Marlowe
William Shakespeare
The tragedies
The comedies
The sonnets
The Seventeenth Century: Religion as a Matter of Life and Death	85	(18)
John Donne
John Milton
Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature: The Age of Reason	103	(16)
Dead white male #1: John Dryden
Dead white male #2: Alexander Pope
Dead white male #3: Jonathan Swift
Dead white male #4: Samuel Johnson
``The proper study of mankind is man''---or is it?
The Nineteenth Century: Revolution and Reaction	119	(34)
Revolutionary repeat
Wordsworth and Coleridge
Byron and the Shelleys
Keats
Jane Austen: Without a room of her own
Celebrating ``patriarchal values''
Women who are bossy (and talk too much)
Men who aren't patriarchal enough
The benefits (to women) of ``sexist'' conventions
Victorian literature
Dickens
The Twentieth Century: The Avant-Garde, and Beyond	153	(14)
Decadents and aesthetes
Modernism
American Literature: Our Own Neglected Canon	167	(20)
Big country, short attention spans
The mystery of evil
The possibility of escape
Why we should still read Huckleberry Finn (despite the ugly racial epithets)
Literature from the Deep South
``A hillbilly Thomist''
Part II: Why They Don't Want You to Learn about English and American Literature	187	(26)
How the PC English Professors Are Suppressing English Literature (Not Teaching It)	189	(14)
English professors teach anything and everything . . . except English literature
Why they don't want you to read English and American literature
``Theory''---Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, and bashing dead white males
Postmodernist jargon: hideously ugly, mentally crippling
Reality-denial as a critical stance
What Literature Is For: ``To Teach and Delight''	203	(10)
What literature is really for
Which literature is truly great?
Truth, beauty, and goodness
Part III: How You Can Teach Yourself English and American Literature---Because Nobody Is Going to Do It for You	213	(30)
How to Get Started (Once You Realize You're Going to Have to Read the Literature on Your Own)	215	(14)
``Close reading''
Reed's Rule
What seems like an ordinary line of poetry
The nuts and bolts of literary analysis
The words themselves (what they mean, what they sound like, where they come from)
A use for English grammar, after all
Meter, verse forms, genres, and beyond
Learn the Poetry by Heart---See the Plays---Gossip about the Novels (That's Just What Jane Austen Did)	229	(14)
Learn the poetry by heart
See the plays as often as you can---or, better yet, act in them
Read the great novels, lend them to your friends, and gossip about the characters
Notes	243	(18)
Acknowledgments	261	(4)
Index	265