Canon and creativity
Subtitle: modern writing and the authority of scripture
By: Robert Alter.
Publisher: Yale Unversity Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: New Haven
Language: eng
Number of pages: 198
Subjects: Literature, Modern -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Canon (Literature); Bible and literature
Description: "In this book, one of our foremost literary critics views the much-debated question of the literary canon from an entirely new angle. Robert Alter explores the ways in which a range of iconoclastic twentieth-century authors have put to use the stories, language, and imagery of the paramount canonical text - the Hebrew Bible. Alter makes a compelling case against the prevalent, pejorative notion of the canon as a vehicle of ideological enforcement.

He shows instead that canons by nature are surprisingly elastic, providing later writers with imaginative resources even when those same writers rebel against what they conceive as the constraints of the canon."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.