Bibliograph

Why read the classics?, Italo Calvino ; translated from the Italian by Martin McLaughlin

Type

Label

Why read the classics?, Italo Calvino ; translated from the Italian by Martin McLaughlin

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Why read the classics?

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

40940087

Responsibility statement

Italo Calvino ; translated from the Italian by Martin McLaughlin

Summary

Italo Calvino was not only a prolific master of fiction, he was also an uncanny reader of literature, a keen critic of astonishing range. This is the most comprehensive collection of Calvino's literary criticism available in English, accounting for the enduring importance to our lives of crucial writers of the Western canon. Here--spanning more than two millennia, from antiquity to postmodernism--are thirty-six immediately relevant, elegantly written, accessible ruminations on the writers, poets, and scientists who meant most to Calvino at different stages of his life. At a time when the Western canon and the very notion of "literary greatness" have come under increasing disparagement by the vanguard of so-called multiculturalism, Calvino gives us an inspiring corrective.--From publisher description

Table Of Contents

Why read the classics? -- The odysseys within The Odyssey -- Xenophon's Anabasis -- Ovid and universal contiguity -- The sky, man, the elephant -- Nezami's seven princesses -- Tirant lo blanc -- The structure of the Orlando furioso -- Brief anthology of Octaves from Ariosto -- Gerolamo Cardano -- The book of nature in Galileo -- Cyrano on the moon -- Robinson Crusoe, journal of mercantile virtues -- Candide, or concerning narrative rapidity -- Denis Diderot, Jacques le fataliste -- Giammaria Ortes -- Knowledge as dust-cloud in Stendhal -- Guide for new readers of Stendhal's Charterhouse -- The city as novel in Balzac -- Charles Dickens, Our mutual friend -- Gustave Flaubert, Trois contes -- Leo Tolstoy, Two Hussars -- Mark Twain, The man that corrupted Hadleyburg -- Henry James, Daisy Miller -- Robert Louis Stevenson, The pavilion on the links -- Conrad's captains -- Pasternak and the Revolution -- The world is an artichoke -- Carlo Emilio Gadda, the Pasticciaccio -- Eugenio Montale, 'Forse un mattino andando' -- Montale's cliff -- Hemingway and ourselves -- Francis Ponge -- Jorge Luis Borges -- The philosophy of Raymond Queneau -- Pavese and human sacrifice

Classification

Creator