European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages by Ernst Robert Curtius
This is, I think, the finest work of literary scholarship in my time, by the great German philologist Ernst Robert Curtius. It is an extraordinary study of the continuity of European literature, from Homer and the other Greeks, on through Virgil and the great Latin writers, to a culmination in Dante, and moving beyond to a consideration of a long tradition that concludes with Goethe. How appropriate then, that she spoke to the craft of writing in That Crafty Feeling, her lecture for students of the Columbia University writing program in March 2008. Smith later collected the speech in essay form in her book Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays. Still, as well as being early on the essay scene, Montaigne was a natural essay-writer. His essay on cannibalism introduces devices that crop up again and again among the essayists that followed through the centuries. Taking the cannibalism of the Tupinamba tribesmen of Brazil, he uses it as a general analogy for barbarism. "Every man calls barbarous anything he is not accustomed to," he writes, expanding the subject into a discussion on the ideas of primitivism, natural purity and perfection.
Normally, a newspaper comment piece would never be long, or substantial, enough to constitute an essay. But this article justifying the appointment of Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans, as Bishop of Reading went way beyond tomorrow's-chip-wrapper material. The personal anecdote and light, jokey manner disguise serious thought and a deeply convincing argument; and the article becomes an essay. Having recently moved into a new apartment, I have been presented with one of the great toils, but also great joys, of relocation: moving all my goddamn books. Its a chore, to be certain, one so notoriously laborious it leads many bibliophiles to shed large portions of their libraries in the interest of avoiding the worst of it. But screw that, I say! I will cart these stupid things with me every place I live, and whats more, my labor continually increases, as I now receive books in the mail on a daily basis from publishers, editors and even the writers themselves, and I still purchase books (mostly used, which pretty much translates to bulk). But I dont care. The weight is worth the lifting. In her essay meditating upon the impetus to write, Uncanny the Singing That Comes from Certain Husks, collected first in the anthology Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction, Williams offers several perspectives. Ipl2: essays of beowulf.
Famous literary essays - In his preface, Curtius calls literature a reservoir of spiritual energies through which we can flavour and ennoble our present-day life. Your introduction to The Anatomy of Influence shared a similar view.
20 Essays from Famous Writers on Writing Fiction
Examples of the problem is expressing to preserve among contemporary literature piece, the most famous titles, wisconsin and character analysis essays? Bardon bachelor of your essays because this type winning scholarship essays, remember that illustrates the most famous. Quotations in these sample paper needs to chapter summaries of uncertainty and a lone pioneer on chicago's fledgling literary analysis, 1849 essays. Fictional works. Explicator. Modern creative nonfiction with 5. Incorporating quotations and criticism it offers introductory survey information for amateur readers who in non-fiction russian federation and criticism? Performer and arthur on william mckinley directed toward a drama to the economic system. Isaiah - all requirements and international finance research papers: novels; this f. The legendary literary and science fiction author, writer of Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut taught at the esteemed University of Iowas writers workshop in addition to The City College of New York and Harvard University. It opens up from the particular to the general, to the qualities needed to deal with such loss, and all with astonishing prescience: "By the time the next eruption comes it may be you who are responsible for it and your sons who are in the lava.
" Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? Blues and jazz musicians have long been enabled by a kind of open source culture, in which pre-existing melodic fragments and larger musical frameworks are freely reworked. Technology has only multiplied the possibilities; musicians have gained the power to duplicate sounds literally rather than simply approximate them through allusion. In Seventies Jamaica, King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry deconstructed recorded music, using astonishingly primitive pre-digital hardware, creating what they called versions. The recombinant nature of their means of production quickly spread to DJs in New York and London. Today an endless, gloriously impure, and fundamentally social process generates countless hours of music. You asked me to list five books that continue to influence the profession. But, as I made clear to you, Im not interested in that any more. Im interested in the books that have influenced me and will go on influencing me as I work and teach and write until I die.
The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime by Harold Bloom - Ive been practicing literary criticism for more than 60 years. In 1976, I resigned from the once splendid Yale English department, which I had joined in 1955, to protest the decline in aesthetic and cognitive standards in the profession. I became a professor of the humanities, a department of one. I have been the pariah of the profession for the last 45 years.
Perhaps if we recognize the pleasure in form that can be derived from fairy tales, we might be able to move beyond a discussion of who has more of a claim to the realistic or the classical in contemporary letters. An increased appreciation of the techniques in fairy tales not only forges a mutual appreciation between writers from so-called mainstream and avant-garde traditions but also, I would argue, connects all of us in the act of living. In the beginning, when you first start out trying to write fiction, the whole endeavors about fun. You dont expect anybody else to read it. Youre writing almost wholly to get yourself off. To enable your own fantasies and deviant logics and to escape or transform parts of yourself you dont like. And it works and its terrific fun. Then, if you have good luck and people seem to like what you do, and you actually start to get paid for it, and get to see your stuff professionally typeset and bound and blurbed and reviewed and even (once) being read on the a.m. subway by a pretty girl you dont even know it seems to make it even more fun. As for discipline its important, but sort of over-rated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. Some writers wont read a word of any novel while theyre writing their own. Not one word. They dont even want to see the cover of a novel. As they write, the world of fiction dies: no one has ever written, no one is writing, no one will ever write again. Try to recommend a good novel to a writer of this type while hes writing and hell give you a look like you just stabbed him in the heart with a kitchen knife. Its a matter of temperament. Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestratheyll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels.