Why Literature Matters : Permanence and the Politics of Reputation

by ARBERY GLENN C.

• ISBN13: 9781882926596
• ISBN10: 1882926595
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-06-01
• Publisher: Isi Books

Summary

We live in a time of unparalleled confusion about the role and importance of literary texts. Deconstructionist literary theory has undermined the notion that there is any genuine, lasting meaning to be found in poems and novels, and an increasingly politicized academy seeks to reduce such texts to the implicit ideologies they purportedly mask.
In the wake of the academic triumph of reductive theory and identity politics, the student and the lover of literature naturally ask: Does literature, as a distinct mode of the imagination, really matter? In fresh and engaging prose, experienced teacher, poet, and critic Glenn C. Arbery here provides a defense of literature's unique cultural and personal importance.

Author Biography

Glenn C. Arbery is Director of the Teachers Academy and Professor of Literature at The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Money or the Mine	p. xi
Why "Literature"?	p. 1
Seamus Heaney and the "Grand Elementary Principle of Pleasure"	p. 21
Recasting Paradise	p. 61
Othello and the Marriages of Politics	p. 89
The Intelligence of Feeling and the Habit of Art	p. 133
The Sacrifice of Achilles	p. 151
Not Conclusion	p. 215
Works Cited	p. 231
Notes	p. 239
Index	p. 247
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