Alan Jacobs

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Kentucky

A Reader's Guide to a More Tranquil Mind

"At a time when many Americans . . . are engaged in deep reflection about the meaning of the nation's history [this] is an exceptionally useful companion for those who want to do so with honesty and integrity." --Shelf Awareness

From the author of How to Think and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, a literary guide to engaging with the voices of the past to stay sane in the present

W. H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively readable new treatise, Breaking Bread with the Dead, Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the strange and wonderful writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present--and increase what Thomas Pynchon once called our "personal density."

Today we are battling too much information in a society changing at lightning speed, with algorithms aimed at shaping our every thought--plus a sense that history offers no resources, only impediments to overcome or ignore. The modern solution to our problems is to surround ourselves only with what we know and what brings us instant comfort. Jacobs's answer is the opposite: to be in conversation with, and challenged by, those from the past who can tell us what we never thought we needed to know.

What can Homer teach us about force? How does Frederick Douglass deal with the massive blind spots of America's Founding Fathers? And what can we learn from modern authors who engage passionately and profoundly with the past? How can Ursula K. Le Guin show us truths about Virgil's female characters that Virgil himself could never have seen? In Breaking Bread with the Dead, a gifted scholar draws us into close and sympathetic engagement with texts from across the ages, including the work of Anita Desai, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Rhys, Simone Weil, Edith Wharton, Amitav Ghosh, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Italo Calvino, and many more.

By hearing the voices of the past, we can expand our consciousness, our sympathies, and our wisdom far beyond what our present moment can offer.

Breaking Bread with the Dead

ca842f53-c7a3-47c6-89f4-06a739dac1c2-1

Samantha Ellis

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Ohio

Or, What I've Learned from Reading Too Much

Taking a retrospective look at the literary ladies, both the characters and writers, whom she has loved since childhood, a playwright and journalist evaluates how her heroines stack up today and shares her experiences growing up in London in a very tightly knit Iraqi-Jewish community. Original. 25,000 first printing.

How to Be a Heroine

e266be88-4425-430c-af4b-22d960580915-1

Natalie Tyler

Reid Boates

Jon Winokur

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Utah

A Well-Mannered Introduction to a Lady of Sense and Sensibility

A celebration of the classic works of the nineteenth century British novelist includes trivia about the author, facts about Austen's life and times, and information on literary themes

The Friendly Jane Austen

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#nonfiction #literarycriticism #paperback 

New York

Walking Tours in Great Britain and Ireland

Literary Landscapes is for readers, writers, romantics, and lovers of all things literary, but above all, it will be a source of special pleasure to the tourist of Great Britain and Ireland.

Literary Landscapes

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Carrie Mullins

New Jersey

How Literature Can Help Us Reinvent Modern Motherhood

This treasure trove for book lovers explores fifteen classic novels with memorable maternal figures, and examines how our cultural notions of motherhood have been shaped by literature. Sweet, supportive, dependable, selfless. Long before she had children of her own, journalist Carrie Mullins knew how mothers should behave. But how? Where did these expectations come from—and, more importantly, are they serving the mothers whose lives they shape? Carrie's suspicion, later crystallized while raising two small children, was that our culture’s idealization of motherhood was not only painfully limiting but harmful, leaving women to cope with impossible standards––standards rarely created by mothers themselves. To discover how we might talk about motherhood in a more realistic, nuanced, and inclusive way, Carrie turned to literature with memorable maternal figures for answers. Moving through the literary canon––from Pride and Prejudice and Little Women to The Great Gatsby, Beloved, Heartburn, and The Joy Luck Club—Carrie traces the origins of our modern mothering experience. By interrogating the influences of politics, economics, feminism, pop culture, and family life in each text, she identifies the factors that have shaped our prevailing views of motherhood, and puts these classics into conversation with the most urgent issues of the day. Who were these literary mothers, beyond their domestic responsibilities and familial demands? And what lessons do they have for us today—if we choose to listen?

The Book of Mothers

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Darrell L. Bock

Was Leonardo da Vinci the one person who stumbled onto a Vatican plot to conceal the truth about Jesus and then exposed it in his famous work of art. "The Last Supper"? Have sinister global religious organizations suppressed secrets that reveal "the real Jesus"? These are the questions people are asking after reading The Da Vinci Code: can the so-called "secret" Gnostic Gospels lead us to a Jesus we don't know?; did Jesus marry and have children?: was Mary Magdalene really one of the apostles?; were the New Testament Gospels assembled in the way "the code" implies?; and just how much of The Da Vinci Code should we believe?

Texas

Answers to the Questions Everyone's Asking

A critique of the bestselling novel "The da Vinci Code" examines various elements of the story to separate fictitious literary creations from historical facts of Christianity.

Breaking the Da Vinci Code with CD

6003293d-6198-4028-b7b9-c59ce8725739-1

Breaking the Da Vinci Code

#hardcover #literarycriticism #aeneid #vergil #greek #testprep #analysis 

Bloom's notes test prep

-- Presents concise, easy-to-understand biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on a specific literary work -- Provides multiple sources for book reports and term papers with a wealth of information on literary works, authors, and major characters -- Digests of critical extracts prefaced by headnotes -- The perfect resource for introducing readers to the analytical techniques of literary criticism

Vergil's Aeneid

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Roy Blount Jr.

CD audio book; 4 discs free on scratches and smudges. Abridged.

Maryland

The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; with Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory

Alphabet Juice - Audio Book on CD

5a9eda2e-2d23-468f-82ab-9615fecc4da0-1

#nonfiction #literarycriticism #hardcover #writing #Poetry #Fiction #Drama #theather #plays #Essays

Tennessee

The writing of Poetry, Fiction, and Drama

Three Genres

980211d8-0326-4b44-a6f2-c49a64456858-1

R. Barbara Gitenstein

Indiana

Focusing on the rich context of esoteric Jerish literature, this collection presents in-depth analyses of Jewish-American poetry. Gitenstein defines Jewish messianism and the literary genre of the apocalyptic, describes historical movements and kabbalistic theories, and analyzes their influence as part of the post-Holocaust consciousness. Represented are works by such poets as Irving Feldman, Jack Hirschman, John Hollander, David Meltzer, and Jerome Rothenberg. Gitenstein recounts the lives of such spectacular eccentrics and holy men as the Abraham Abulafia (thirteenth century), Isaac Luria (sixteenth century), Shabbatai Zevi (seventeenth century), and Jacob Frank (eighteenth century) and identifies their theories as part of the history of the literary apocalyptic genre--the literature of exile, the literature of catastrophe.

Apocalyptic Messianism and Contemporary Jewish-American Poetry

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Nancy Pearl

Illinois

Book Lust

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Washington

Arizona

#nonfiction #literarycriticism #hardcover 

Iowa

How to read and why

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essay reviews of 100 outstanding books published in US during 1980

Wisconsin

Grolier’s Masterplots 1981 Annual

Missing dust jacket. #nonfiction #literarycriticism #hardcover 

Michigan

The best of the printed word 1900 To present

The literary almanac

California

An Autopsy

As the study of literature has extended to cultural contexts, critics have developed a language all their own. Yet, argues Mark Bauerlein, scholars of literature today are so unskilled in pertinent sociohistorical methods that they compensate by adopting cliches and catchphrases that serve as substitutes for information and logic. Thus by labeling a set of ideas an "ideology" they avoid specifying those ideas, or by saying that someone "essentializes" a concept they convey the air of decisive refutation. As long as a paper is generously sprinkled with the right words, clarification is deemed superfluous. Bauerlein contends that such usages only serve to signal political commitments, prove membership in subgroups, or appeal to editors and tenure committees, and that current textual practices are inadequate to the study of culture and politics they presume to undertake. His book discusses 23 commonly encountered terms—from "deconstruction" and "gender" to "problematize" and "rethink"—and offers a diagnosis of contemporary criticism through their analysis. He examines the motives behind their usage and the circumstances under which they arose and tells why they continue to flourish. A self-styled "handbook of counterdisciplinary usage," Literary Criticism: An Autopsy shows how the use of illogical, unsound, or inconsistent terms has brought about a breakdown in disciplinary focus. It is an insightful and entertaining work that challenges scholars to reconsider their choice of words—and to eliminate many from critical inquiry altogether.

Literary Criticism

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Raymond Adolph Prier

Hardcover, no dust jacket, both in excellent condition. Price in pencil on front end paper. 

On the Primacy of Texts in Literary Criticism

In their readings of texts, the authors address the topics of theory, narrative, aesthetics, the idea of the text, and of specific moments in cultural history. The chapters cover a range of authors: Plato, Ovid, Dante, Petrarch, Chariteo, Ariosto, Tasso, Cervantes, Kleist, Gode, Edith Wharton, Pirandello, Kafka, Sartre, Saint-John Perse, Paz, Roubaud, Sanguineti, and Tomlinson. They also deal with philosophers: Peirce, Nietzsche, Saussure, Husserl, Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, Heidegger, Jakobson, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Lyotard, and Deleuze. The book opens up our relationships to the past and the usefulness or otherwise of the metaphors we use in our attempt to understand and participate in it. Although Countercurrents deals diversely with literary periods, authors, and critics, it speaks within the civilized and civilizing universe of our language and the texts we create. Running beneath the antihumanistic flotilla that skims the surface of texts for theory, the authors plumb for treasures from the ocean's floor.

Countercurrents

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James S. Hans

Hardcover without dust jacket in excellent condition. Price in pencil on front end paper 

This book explores the relationship between authority and context and attempts to establish the ways in which authority is a function of a particular agent or set of agents, and the degree to which it is a product of a context rather than an agent. The work is not a sociological or psychological study but rather a literary/philosophical speculation into the roots of our conceptions of authority. It declares all authority to be aesthetic in nature and is based on an analysis of several key texts from various different cultural backgrounds: Foucault, Weber, Nietzsche, Confucius, and Homer.

Contextual Authority and Aesthetic Truth

28660b1c-2d41-4f4c-a5c3-d37e60f26fcc-0

Louisiana

Postmodern Pooh

SparkNotes

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Florida

English

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, this book offers students what they need to succeed. It provides chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs and symbols, a review quiz, and essay topics. It is suitable for late-night studying and paper writing.

The Scarlet Letter SparkNotes Literature Guide

90793248-7bf7-46a5-8c4e-8a6c78b255ce-1

Small dots on cover 
Pages yellowed with age 

Beechhurst Press, 1947, 200 pages 

"The great question as to a poet or novelist is, How does he feel about life? What, in the last analysis, is his philosophy? ... This is the most interesting thing their works offer us. Details are interesting in proportion as they contribute to make it clear." -Henry James



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Alan Jacobs

Breaking Bread with the Dead

Samantha Ellis

How to Be a Heroine

Natalie Tyler; Reid Boates; Jon Winokur

The Friendly Jane Austen

L. N. Franco

Literary Landscapes

Carrie Mullins

The Book of Mothers

Darrell L. Bock

Breaking the Da Vinci Code with CD

Darrell L. Bock

Breaking the Da Vinci Code

Harold Bloom (Editor, Introduction by)

Vergil's Aeneid

Roy Blount Jr.

Alphabet Juice - Audio Book on CD

Stephen Minot

Three Genres

R. Barbara Gitenstein

Apocalyptic Messianism and Contemporary Jewish-American Poetry

Nancy Pearl

Book Lust

Darrell L. Bock

Breaking the Da Vinci Code

Nancy Pearl

Book Lust

Harold Bloom

How to read and why

Grolier’s Literary Annual

Grolier’s Masterplots 1981 Annual

Mjf books

The literary almanac

Mark Bauerlein

Literary Criticism

Raymond Adolph Prier

Countercurrents

James S. Hans

Contextual Authority and Aesthetic Truth

Frederick Crews

Postmodern Pooh

SparkNotes; Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter SparkNotes Literature Guide

Philip Freund

How to Become a Literary Critic

Nancy Pearl

Book Lust