The use and abuse of literature
By: Marjorie Garber
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780375424342
Subjects: Literature; Philosophy; Appreciation
Description: Even as the decline of the reading of literature, as argued by the National Endowment for the Arts, proceeds in our culture, the author, gives us a meditation on the usefulness and uselessness of literature in the digital age. What is literature, anyway? How has it been understood over time, and what is its relevance for us today? Who are its gatekeepers? Is its canonicity fixed? Why has literature been on the defensive since Plato? Does it have any use at all, or does it merely serve as an aristocratic or bourgeois accoutrement attesting to worldly sophistication and refinement of spirit? Is it, as most of us assume, good to read literature, much less study it, and what does either mean? This is a book about our culture in crisis, as well as an appreciation of popular culture. The winning aim is to reclaim literature from the margins of our personal, educational, and professional lives and restore it to the center, as a fierce, radical way of thinking.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Use and abuse; title: The pleasures of the canon; title: What isn't literature; title: What's love got to do with it?; title: So you want to read a poem; title: Why literature is always contemporary; title: On truth and lie in a literary sense; title: Mixed metaphors; title: The impossibility of closure.