The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American LiteratureWhat 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
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Page xi
... beauty, and goodness How You Can Teach Yourself English and American Literature—Because Nobody Is Going to Do It for You How to Get Started (Once You Realize You're Going to Have to Read the Literature on Your Own) “Close reading ...
... beauty, and goodness How You Can Teach Yourself English and American Literature—Because Nobody Is Going to Do It for You How to Get Started (Once You Realize You're Going to Have to Read the Literature on Your Own) “Close reading ...
Page xviii
... beauty, and despise ugliness—to admire skill, and know the difference between consummate achievement and lazy bungling. What all these lessons have in common is that it's hard to imagine politically correct English professors' being ...
... beauty, and despise ugliness—to admire skill, and know the difference between consummate achievement and lazy bungling. What all these lessons have in common is that it's hard to imagine politically correct English professors' being ...
Page 32
... beauty—of layers within layers, a great plethora of things that can't be contained or ever accounted for, of detail that continues to surprise and delight because there can be no end to discovering more of it—was in the air of late ...
... beauty—of layers within layers, a great plethora of things that can't be contained or ever accounted for, of detail that continues to surprise and delight because there can be no end to discovering more of it—was in the air of late ...
Page 35
... Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits. But rather than reducing everything to monotone abstraction, allegory in medieval literature makes available a whole new cast of characters who seem as concrete and lively as flesh-and-blood ...
... Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits. But rather than reducing everything to monotone abstraction, allegory in medieval literature makes available a whole new cast of characters who seem as concrete and lively as flesh-and-blood ...
Page 39
... beauty that's different from perfection. It's the same beauty as medieval literature has: a reflection of the amazing variety of the human race and the infinite value and interest of each of its members—each individual created in God's ...
... beauty that's different from perfection. It's the same beauty as medieval literature has: a reflection of the amazing variety of the human race and the infinite value and interest of each of its members—each individual created in God's ...
Contents
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 |
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The Politically Incorrect Guide to English And American Literature Elizabeth Kantor Limited preview - 2006 |
Common terms and phrases
American literature Anglo-Saxon artists Battle of Maldon beauty Beowulf Canterbury Tales century characters Chaucer’s Christian civilization Coleridge comedies courtly love criticism culture dead white males death Donne Donne’s Dryden eeeeee eighteenth-century Eliot England English and American English literature Evelyn Waugh example Faulkner Faustus female feminist Flannery O’Connor gender God’s Handmaid’s Tale happiness heart Henry hero human nature husband Jane Austen Jane Austen’s novels John Johnson kind king Lady language literary lives man’s Marlowe Marlowe’s marriage Marxism medieval Milton modern moral Old English patriarchal PC English professors Piers Plowman poem poetry political Pope postmodernist religion religious Renaissance sexual Shakespeare Shakespeare’s Sonnets Shelley sonnet story T. S. Eliot teach there’s things traditional tragedy truth University viewed Western what’s who’s wife Wilde William William Faulkner woman women words Wordsworth writing wrote young
Popular passages
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.