The question of the canon has been the subject of debate in academic circles for over fifteen years. Pleasure and Change contains two lectures on this important subject by the distinguished literary critic Sir Frank Kermode. In essays that were originally delivered as Tanner Lectures at Berkeley in November of 2001, Kermode reinterprets the question of canon formation in light of two related and central notions: pleasure and change. He asks how aesthetic pleasure informs what we find valuable, and how this perception changes over time. Kermode also explores the role...
The question of the canon has been the subject of debate in academic circles for over fifteen years. Pleasure and Change contains two lecture...
From one of our premier literary scholars, here is a learned and witty introduction to the sheer vitality of literature and the satisfactions of a close, informed engagement with it (New York Times). Robert Alter s illumination of the unique power of reading literature is especially valuable at a time when we are surrounded by electronic texts that distract more than engage and when the special claims of literature are disparaged by the high priests of literary theory. Alter explores the strategies that distinguish literature the resources of style, the dynamics of allusion, the formal design...
From one of our premier literary scholars, here is a learned and witty introduction to the sheer vitality of literature and the satisfactions of a clo...
Acclaimed for its masterful new translation and insightful commentary, The David Story is a fresh, vivid rendition of one of the great works in Western literature. Robert Alter's brilliant translation gives us David, the beautiful, musical hero who slays Goliath and, through his struggles with Saul, advances to the kingship of Israel. But this David is also fully human: an ambitious, calculating man who navigates his life's course with a flawed moral vision. The consequences for him, his family, and his nation are tragic and bloody. Historical personage and full-blooded imagining, David is...
Acclaimed for its masterful new translation and insightful commentary, The David Story is a fresh, vivid rendition of one of the great works in Wester...
Dan Pagis (1930-1986) spent three of his adolescent years in a Nazi camp before arriving in Palestine in 1946. He became one of the most vibrant voices in modern Israeli poetry and is considered a major world poet of his generation. A master scholar of Hebrew literature, Pagis drew fully on classical texts and infused his poetry with a centuries-old mysticism. Yet he also brought an immediacy and colloquialism to Hebrew poetry. In these superbly translated poems, Dan Pagis's voice can be heard celebrating the human spirit.
Dan Pagis (1930-1986) spent three of his adolescent years in a Nazi camp before arriving in Palestine in 1946. He became one of the most vibrant voice...
"For many serious readers," Robert Alter writes in his preface, "the novel still matters, and I have tried here to suggest some reasons why that should be so." In his wide-ranging discussion, Alter examines the imitation of reality in fiction to find out why mimesis has become problematic yet continues to engage us deeply as readers.
Alter explores very different sorts of novels, from the self-conscious artifices of Sterne and Nabokov to what seem to be more realistic texts, such as those of Dickens, Flaubert, John Fowles, and the early Norman Mailer. Attention is also given to such...
"For many serious readers," Robert Alter writes in his preface, "the novel still matters, and I have tried here to suggest some reasons why that sh...
Rediscover the incmparable literary richness and strength of the Bible. An International team of renowned scholars offers and book-by-book guide through the Old Testaments as well as general essays on the Bible as a whole, providing an enticing reintroduction to a work that has shaped our language and thought for thousands of years.
Rediscover the incmparable literary richness and strength of the Bible. An International team of renowned scholars offers and book-by-book guide throu...
A selection of the Best Writing in Israel Today Edited by Joel Blocker, introduction by Robert Alter The present volume of Israeli stories reassuringly illustrates the other half of a frequently asserted half-truth. Modern Hebrew literature, it is claimed, liked Yiddish literature, does not really share the large concerns of serious literary activity in the West. The Hebrew writer ordinarily does not address himself to the human situation with all of its far-reaching possibilities of tragedy of comedy, but to the Jewish situation, which is quite another thing. Consequently, Hebrew and...
A selection of the Best Writing in Israel Today Edited by Joel Blocker, introduction by Robert Alter The present volume of Israeli stories rea...
A perfect way of looking into a country, inside its houses and apartment buildings, at its weddings and feuds and even wars.--Na'amat Woman. Collectively, the pieces present a view of Israeli life seldom encountered by tourists or other outsiders.--Library Journal. Map.
A perfect way of looking into a country, inside its houses and apartment buildings, at its weddings and feuds and even wars.--Na'amat Woman. Collectiv...
The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning--and its powerful eloquence continues to be felt even today. In this book, acclaimed biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some of the fascinating ways that American novelists--from Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner to Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy--have drawn on the rich stylistic resources of the canonical English Bible to fashion their own strongly resonant styles and distinctive visions of reality. Showing the radically different manners in...
The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning--and its powerful eloquence continues to be ...
