The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature

Front Cover
Simon and Schuster, Nov 13, 2006 - Literary Criticism - 278 pages
What PC English professors don't want you to learn from . . .

- Beowulf: If we don't admire heroes, there's something wrong with us

- Chaucer: Chivalry has contributed enormously to women's happiness

- Shakespeare: Some choices are inherently destructive (it's just built into the nature of things)

- Milton: Our intellectual freedoms are Christian, not anti-Christian, in origin

- Jane Austen: Most men would be improved if they were more patriarchal than they actually are

- Dickens: Reformers can do more harm than the injustices they set out to reform

- T. S. Eliot: Tradition is necessary to culture

- Flannery O'Connor: Even modern American liberals aren't immune to original sin

From inside the book

Contents

First Chapter
3
References
243
Index
265
Back Cover
285
Front Cover
286
Title Page
v
Copyright Page
vi
Table of Contents
ix
Introduction
xiii
First Chapter
3
References
243
Index
265
Back Cover
285
Copyright

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Page 76 - Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign ; one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance : commits his body To painful labour, both by sea and land ; To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, While thou liest warm at home, secure and safe; And craves no other tribute at thy hands, But love, fair looks, and true obedience, — Too little payment for so great a debt.
Page 72 - ... the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without...
Page 75 - I will be master of what is mine own. She is my goods, my chattels ; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything...
Page 134 - Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Page 132 - I never was attached to that great sect Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion...
Page 203 - I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.
Page 203 - The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.
Page 85 - Before all temples the upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for thou know'st; thou from the first Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, Dove-like, sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is dark Illumine; what is low, raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.
Page 94 - And from thence can soar as soon To the corners of the moon. Mortals, that would follow me, Love Virtue ; she alone is free. She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.

About the author (2006)

Elizabeth Kantor is author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature and The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. in philosophy from Catholic University of America. Kantor has taught English literature and written for publications ranging from National Review Online to the Boston Globe. An avid Jane Austen fan, she is happily married and lives with her husband and son in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

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