Iconic Books and Texts

Iconic Books and Texts PDF Author: James W. Watts
Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)
ISBN: 9781781792544
Category : Books
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume is the first comprehensive survey of iconic books and texts. It traces their development and influence from ancient to modern times and compares their roles in multiple cultures and religious traditions.

Iconic Books and Texts

Iconic Books and Texts PDF Author: James W. Watts
Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)
ISBN: 9781781792544
Category : Books
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This volume is the first comprehensive survey of iconic books and texts. It traces their development and influence from ancient to modern times and compares their roles in multiple cultures and religious traditions.

How and why Books Matter

How and why Books Matter PDF Author: James W. Watts
Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)
ISBN: 9781781797693
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Religious and secular communities ritualize some books in one, two, or three dimensions. They ritualize the dimension of semantic interpretation through teaching, preaching, and scholarly commentary. This dimension receives almost all the attention of academic scholars. Communities also ritualize a text's expressive dimension through public reading, recitation, and song, and also by reproducing its contents in art, theatre and film. This dimension is receiving increasing scholarly attention, especially in religious studies and anthropology. A third textual dimension, the iconic dimension, gets ritualized by manipulating the physical text, decorating it, and displaying it. This dimension has received almost no academic attention, yet features prominently in the most common news stories about books, whether about e-books, academic libraries, rare manuscript discoveries, or scripture desecrations. By calling attention to the iconic dimension of books, James Watts argues that we can better understand how physical books mediate social value and power within and between religious communities, nations, academic disciplines, and societies both ancient and modern.How and Why Books Matter will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in books, reading, literacy, scriptures, e-books, publishing, and the future of the book. It also addresses scholarship in religion, cultural studies, literacy studies, biblical studies, book history, anthropology, literary studies, and intellectual history.

Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings

Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings PDF Author: James W. Watts
Publisher: Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts
ISBN: 9781781798843
Category : Books and reading
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
In this volume an international team of scholars address the theme of books as sacred beings from an impressively diverse range of primary material and perspectives. Yet, as a group, they meld to engage and advance previous research to solidify the conclusion that human cultures, especially religious groups, often ritualize bodies as sacred books and books as divine beings. The studies collected here not only increase the range of examples of this phenomenon. They also show the wide variety of ways in which the identity of books, bodies and beings gets both ritualized and theorized. The articles are bracketed by an introduction to the collection, and then by a concluding essay that extrapolates the theme of books as sacred beings on a more general level.

Books that Changed the World

Books that Changed the World PDF Author: Andrew Taylor
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1849165610
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Books that Changed the World tells the fascinating stories behind 50 books that, in ways great and small, have changed the course of human history. Andrew Taylor sets each text in its historical context and explores its wider influence and legacy. Whether he's discussing the incandescent effect of The Qu'ran, the enduring influence of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, of the way in which Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe glavanized the anti-slavery movement, Taylor has written a stirring and informative testament to human ingenuity and endeavour. Ranging from The Iliad to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the Kama Sutra to Lady Chatterley's Lover, this is the ultimate, thought-provoking read for book-lovers everywhere.

The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written

The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written PDF Author: Martin Seymour-Smith
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
The hundred books discussed here have radically altered the course of civilisation , whether they have embodied religions practised by millions, achieved the pinnacle of artistic expression, pointed the way to scientific discovery of enormous consequence, redirected beliefs about the nature of man, or forever altered the global political landscape. For each there is a historical overview, an analysis of the work's effect on our lives today and a lively discussion of the reasons for inclusion.

Texts from Jane Eyre

Texts from Jane Eyre PDF Author: Daniel Mallory Ortberg
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1472150740
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Mallory Ortberg presents... Texts from Jane Eyre is a whimsical collection of sharp, satirical and side-splittingly funny text message conversations from your favourite literary characters. Of course if Scarlett O'Hara had an unlimited data plan, she'd be sexting Ashley Wilkes at all hours; and if Mr Rochester could text Jane Eyre, his ARDENT MISSIVES would be in ALL-CAPS; and Daisy Buchanan would text you from behind the wheel - and then text you to come pick her up after the car crash. Texts from Jane Eyre is a witty, original and very clever kind of mashup that brings your favourite authors and literary characters right into the twenty-first century. Mallory Ortberg is a genius.

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces PDF Author: John Kennedy Toole
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 0802197620
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.”—The New York Times Book Review A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).

Rescuing Socrates

Rescuing Socrates PDF Author: Roosevelt Montas
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691224390
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
A Dominican-born academic tells the story of how the Great Books transformed his life—and why they have the power to speak to people of all backgrounds What is the value of a liberal education? Traditionally characterized by a rigorous engagement with the classics of Western thought and literature, this approach to education is all but extinct in American universities, replaced by flexible distribution requirements and ever-narrower academic specialization. Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities. In Rescuing Socrates, Dominican-born American academic Roosevelt Montás tells the story of how a liberal education transformed his life, and offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities. Montás emigrated from the Dominican Republic to Queens, New York, when he was twelve and encountered the Western classics as an undergraduate in Columbia University’s renowned Core Curriculum, one of America’s last remaining Great Books programs. The experience changed his life and determined his career—he went on to earn a PhD in English and comparative literature, serve as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum, and start a Great Books program for low-income high school students who aspire to be the first in their families to attend college. Weaving together memoir and literary reflection, Rescuing Socrates describes how four authors—Plato, Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi—had a profound impact on Montás’s life. In doing so, the book drives home what it’s like to experience a liberal education—and why it can still remake lives.

Outstanding Books for the College Bound

Outstanding Books for the College Bound PDF Author: Angela Carstensen
Publisher: American Library Association
ISBN: 083899315X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
More than simply a vital collection development tool, this book can help librarians help young adults grow into the kind of independent readers and thinkers who will flourish at college.

The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature

The People and the Books: 18 Classics of Jewish Literature PDF Author: Adam Kirsch
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039360831X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
An accessible introduction to the classics of Jewish literature, from the Bible to modern times, by "one of America’s finest literary critics" (Wall Street Journal). Jews have long embraced their identity as “the people of the book.” But outside of the Bible, much of the Jewish literary tradition remains little known to nonspecialist readers. The People and the Books shows how central questions and themes of our history and culture are reflected in the Jewish literary canon: the nature of God, the right way to understand the Bible, the relationship of the Jews to their Promised Land, and the challenges of living as a minority in Diaspora. Adam Kirsch explores eighteen classic texts, including the biblical books of Deuteronomy and Esther, the philosophy of Maimonides, the autobiography of the medieval businesswoman Glückel of Hameln, and the Zionist manifestoes of Theodor Herzl. From the Jews of Roman Egypt to the mystical devotees of Hasidism in Eastern Europe, The People and the Books brings the treasures of Jewish literature to life and offers new ways to think about their enduring power and influence.