San Antonio College Library

First in a set of reading plans for the Great books of the Western world series. Study guide.

Herman Sinaiko is renowned for his gifts as a guide to exploring and appreciating the humanities. This book brings to general readers Sinaiko's thoughts on, and his invitations to read or reread, a wide selection of major literary and philosophical works - from ancient Greek to Chinese to modern. Taking a conversational approach, he deals with the perennial questions that thinking people have always raised and investigates how works of great art may...

"Why Literature Matters in the 21st Century examines literature in its connection to virtue and moral excellence. The author is concerned with literature as the teacher of virtue. The current crisis in the humanities, Mark William Roche argues, may be traced back to the separation of art and morality."--Jacket.

In these delightful essays, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda introduces nearly ninety of the world's most entertaining books.

George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 have sold 40 million copies in 65 languages, more than any other pair of books by a single writer in history. Since his death in 1950, he has served as a personal and intellectual model for groups of writers across the political spectrum, ranging from the New Left radicals to the New York Intellectuals to the John Birch Society. But his literary achievement alone does not account for the intense admiration--and,...

"Joining the current debates in American literary history, José David Saldívar offers a challenging new perspective on what constitutes not only the canon in American literature, but also the notion of America itself. His aim is the articulation of a fresh, transgeographical conception of American culture, one more responsive to the geographical ties and political crosscurrents of the hemisphere than to narrow national ideologies. Saldívar pursues...

The author explores Western literary tradition by concentrating on the works of twenty-six authors central to the Canon. In this book, the author argues against ideology in literary criticism; laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards; and tackles topics including multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afrocentrism, and the New Historicism. Insisting instead upon "the autonomy of the aesthetic," the author places Shakespeare...

This collection of essays describes the genesis of ten classic works of American literature. Using biographical, cultural, and manuscript evidence, the contributors tell the "stories of stories," plotting the often curious and always interesting ways in which notable American books took shape in a writer's mind.