WHY LITERATURE MATTERS
Permanence and the Politics of Reputation
By Glenn C. Arbery
List Item No. 302
ISBN: 1-882926-59-5 (cloth)
280 pages (includes Index)
List Price: $24.95
Internet Special: $21.21 —
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Contemporary confusion over the role and importance of traditional literary texts invites us to reconsider why literature matters in the first place. Through an examination of the work of poets and novelists who have managed to garner honor—including those whose canonical status is assured, like Shakespeare, Homer, and Emily Dickinson—and those whose reputations are of more recent vintage and therefore more difficult to evaluate, such as Tom Wolfe, Seamus Heaney, and Toni Morrison, Glenn Arbery explores this question with elegant prose and subtle criticism. Arbery argues that the importance of literature can be traced to several fundamental factors, including the poetic mode of knowledge offered by literary form, the intrinsic pleasure experienced when "world becomes word," and the multiple, complex layers of reality—and their anagogical meaning—revealed by great literature.
What They're Saying...
"[Arbery] presents interesting close readings of texts while provocatively proving his point: literature does matter..."
— Choice
"...[A] praiseworthy set of essays..."
— ForeWord
"In this engaging and at the same time startlingly profound book Glenn Arbery presents a new sort of criticism, both theoretical and practical, based on an assimilation of the classics so complete as to be almost visceral. Arbery's writing signals the advent of that figure for whom we have been waiting: the critic who is also a member of society, also himself a person, also emotionally involved. Those who read Dr. Arbery's book are likely not ever to regard stories, or language, or feeling—or ordinary events—in quite the same way again."
— Louise Cowan, author and critic, recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Charles Frankel Prize
"A remarkable work of scholarship dealing with an array of poets, novelists, playwrights, and literary critics. Engagingly couched in postmodern theory, it makes an eloquent case against the discourse of power that permeates literary criticism in the early twenty-first century, favoring instead the proposition that literature is a mode of knowledge. The book is a reminder that when the best lack all conviction, great literature continues to teach wisdom.”
— Ewa M. Thompson, Professor of Slavic Studies, Rice University
“At a time when too much literary criticism has been reduced to fashionable jargon or dreary autobiographical posturing, Glenn C. Arbery’s book shows that compelling critical work can still be produced when a critic has the courage to tackle the big questions, the honesty to confront the resulting ambiguities, and the humane intelligence to analyze them effectively. Arbery has all three qualities in abundance. His subtle and compelling study is eloquently argued, with a rich range of literary reference that engages, challenges, and above all convinces.”
— Martine Brownley, Goodrich C. White Professor of English Department of English, Emory University
Chapters Include:
- The Money or the Mine
- Why "Literature"?
- Seamus Heaney and the "Grand Elementary Principle of Pleasure"
- Recasting Paradise
- Othello and the Marriages of Politics
- The Intelligence of Feeling and the Habit of Art
- The Sacrifice of Achilles
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