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BookPrinted Material
Author Garber, Marjorie B.

Title The use and abuse of literature / Marjorie Garber.

Publication Info. New York : Pantheon Books, [2011]
©2011

Item Status

Location Call No. Status OPAC Message Public Note Gift Note
 Moore Stacks  PN45 .G312 2011    Available  ---
Edition 1st ed.
Description 320 pages ; 25 cm
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary 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.
Contents Use and abuse -- The pleasures of the canon -- What isn't literature -- What's love got to do with it? -- So you want to read a poem -- Why literature is always contemporary -- On truth and lie in a literary sense -- Mixed metaphors -- The impossibility of closure.
Subject Literature -- Philosophy.
Literature -- Philosophy.
Literature -- Appreciation.
Literature -- Appreciation.
ISBN 9780375424342
0375424342