Reclaiming the Canon: Essays on Philosophy, Poetry, and History

Portada
Yale University Press, 30 de març 1998 - 352 pàgines
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 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 provide answers to these questions.
Sinaiko reestablishes the notion that there is a canon of great works from the great traditions of the world and argues for the existence of permanent standards of excellence. He rejects most contemporary critical views of classical literature and philosophy, including those of "experts" who seek to monopolize access to great works, academics whose extreme emphasis on historical context disallows any current relevance, and theorists whose lenses distort with personal bias rather than sharpening focus on the works they discuss. Sinaiko reclaims the canon for all of us, opening up discussion on texts ranging from Plato to Tolstoy, Confucius to Mary Shelley, and encouraging each reader to listen and respond to the rich diversity of powerful views on the human condition that such great works offer.

Des de l'interior del llibre

Continguts

Talk and Truth
3
Psychotherapy and the Search for Wisdom
19
THE HUMAN CONDITION
37
Reading Homers Iliad
39
The Adolescence of Telemachus
56
History Poetry and Philosophy in Tolstoys War and Peace
66
Tolstoys Anna Karenina
82
Theme Structure and Meaning in Herodotus History
95
Art and the Comparison of Cultures
178
Tragedy in Poetry and in Life
199
How Is the Canon Determined?
213
Who Will Teach the Teachers?
227
The Structure of Teaching
241
Structure and Argument in Republic
255
This
258
The Divided Line
277

Analyzing a Lyric Poem
111
Art and the Artist
126
Reflections on the Monster
142
Confucius Claim to Philosophical Greatness
154
Socrates Critique of Poetry in Republic
300
The Limitations on Human Wisdom
323
References 337
Copyright

Altres edicions - Mostra-ho tot

Frases i termes més freqüents

Passatges populars

Pàgina 113 - Labour is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
Pàgina 132 - The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea - something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to.
Pàgina 143 - I beheld the wretch— the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks.
Pàgina 111 - And thinking of that fit of grief or rage I look upon one child or t'other there And wonder if she stood so at that age — For even daughters of the swan can share Something of every paddler's heritage...
Pàgina 143 - Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.
Pàgina 111 - I WALK through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and histories, To cut and sew, be neat in everything In the best modern way - the children's eyes In momentary wonder stare upon A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
Pàgina 112 - Plato thought nature but a spume that plays Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; Solider Aristotle played the taws Upon the bottom of a king of kings; World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings What a star sang and careless Muses heard: Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
Pàgina 130 - Let the fool gape and shudder - the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his own true stuff - with his own inborn strength. Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags - rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief.
Pàgina 127 - It was in 1868, when nine years old or thereabouts, that while looking at a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on the blank space then representing the unsolved mystery of that continent, I said to myself with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity which are no longer in my character now: "When I grow up I shall go there.
Pàgina 131 - The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth.

Sobre l'autor (1998)


.

Informació bibliogràfica