Literary Taste
by Bennett Arnold
- Used
- good
- Paperback
- Condition
- Good/Good
- Seller
-
Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
The aim of literary study is not to amuse the hours of leisure; it is to awake oneself, it is to be alive, to intensify one's capacity for pleasure, for sympathy, and for comprehension. It is not to affect one hour, but twenty-four hours. It is to change utterly one's relations with the world. An understanding appreciation of literature means an understanding appreciation of the world, and it means nothing else. Not isolated and unconnected parts of life, but all of life, brought together and correlated in a synthetic map! The spirit of literature is unifying; it joins the candle and the star, and by the magic of an image shows that the beauty of the greater is in the less. And, not content with the disclosure of beauty and the bringing together of all things whatever within its focus, it enforces a moral wisdom by the tracing everywhere of cause and effect. It consoles doubly - by the revelation of unsuspected loveliness, and by the proof that our lot is the common lot. It is the supreme cry of the discoverer, offering sympathy and asking for it in a single gesture. In attending a University Extension Lecture on the sources of Shakespeare's plots, or in studying the researches of George Saintsbury into the origins of English prosody, or in weighing the evidence for and against the assertion that Rousseau was a scoundrel, one is apt to forget what literature really is and is for. It is well to remind ourselves that literature is first and last a means of life, and that the enterprise of forming one's literary taste is an enterprise of learning how best to use this means of life. People who don't want to live, people who would sooner hibernate than feel intensely, will be wise to eschew literature. They had better, to quote from the finest passage in a fine poem, "sit around and eat blackberries." The sight of a "common bush afire with God" might upset their nerves.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Glenbower Books (IE)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 22314
- Title
- Literary Taste
- Author
- Bennett Arnold
- Format/Binding
- Paperback
- Book Condition
- Used - Good
- Jacket Condition
- Good
- Edition
- Reprint
- Publisher
- Pelican
- Place of Publication
- London
- Date Published
- 1939
- Keywords
- ENGLISH LITERATURE, READING,
- Bookseller catalogs
- Literature, Arts etc;
- Size
- 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall
Terms of Sale
Glenbower Books
Full refund will be given if customer is not satisfied. Payment accepted in Euro, Sterling and US dollars (cheque or money order or bank-to-bank transfer) or by Paypal. Orders in the €100 area and above will be sent by registered post (i.e. with tracking). Tracking on cheaper items, if desired, will cost an extra €8.00 - this is the postal service charge. Please let me know when ordering. As I am mailing from Ireland, international orders may take from five to more than 30 working days to arrive due to the current pandemic conditions. I do not control the international postal service and cannot guarantee delivery times.
About the Seller
Glenbower Books
About Glenbower Books
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Dustwrapper
- Also known as book jacket, dust cover, or dust wrapper, a dust jacket is a protective and decorative cover for a book that is...
- 12mo
- A duodecimo is a book approximately 7 by 4.5 inches in size, or similar in size to a contemporary mass market paperback. Also...
- Reprint
- Any printing of a book which follows the original edition. By definition, a reprint is not a first edition.
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...