e-branch
Login
My List - 0
Help
Home
My Account/Renew Loans
Community Info
KidSearch
New Catalogue!
Search
Advanced
By Format
By Number
My Searches
Can't Find it?
Find Magazine Articles & more
Problems?
Search:
Call Number
Item Barcode
Bib Number
ISBN/ISSN
Refine Search
> You're searching:
Halifax Public Libraries
Item Information
Copy / Holding Information
Publisher Weekly Review
Table of Contents
More Content
More by this author
Jacobs, Alan, 1958-
Subjects
Literature and society.
Social problems in literature.
Anxiety in literature.
Presentism (Philosophy)
Browse Catalog
by author:
Jacobs, Alan, 1958-
by title:
Breaking bread with ...
by call number:
809 J17b
Search the Web
Jacobs, Alan, 1958-
Literature and society.
Social problems in literature.
Anxiety in literature.
Presentism (Philosophy)
MARC Display
Breaking bread with the dead : a reader's guide to a more tranquil mind / Alan Jacobs.
by
Jacobs, Alan, 1958-
Penguin Press, 2020.
Call #:
809
J17b
Subjects
Literature and society.
Social problems in literature.
Anxiety in literature.
Presentism (Philosophy)
ISBN:
9781984878403 (hc.)
Description:
xiii, 176 p. ; 22 cm.
Bibliography:
Includes bibliographical references (pages [163]-170) and index.
Summary:
"W.H. Auden once wrote that 'art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.' In his brilliant and compulsively readable new treatise, distinguished professor and author Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the great writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present. Today we are battling too much information, a society changing at lightning speed, algorithms aimed at shaping our every move, and a sense that history is not a resource, only something to be vanquished. The modern solution to our problems is turn inwards, to surround ourselves only with that which is like us. Jacobs' answer is just the opposite: to be in conversation with, and to be challenged by, the great thinkers of the past. What can Homer teach us about force? What does Frederick Douglass have to say about our difficulties with the Founding Fathers? And what can we learn from modern authors who are doing this work? How can Ursula K. Le Guin teach us to see the women of the canon differently? [The book] is a close reading with a gifted scholar of texts from across the ages, including the work of Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Rhys, Simone Weil, Edith Wharton, Claude Levi-Strauss, Italo Calvino, and many more. By hearing the voices of the past, we can expand our consciousness, our sympathies, and our wisdom far beyond what our present moment can offer."--From publisher.
Genre:
Literary criticism
Holds:
0
Copy/Holding information
Location
Collection
Call No.
Item type
Status
Woodlawn Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
809 J17b
Adult books
Checked in
Add Copy to MyList
Horizon Information Portal 3.24_8902M
© 2001-2013
SirsiDynix
All rights reserved.