In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century (Blackwell Manifestos)

Description

Written by influential scholar-critic and award-winning Daniel R. Schwarz, In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in the Twenty-First Century is a passionate and joyful defense of the pleasures of reading. This stimulating book provides valuable insights for teachers and students on why we read and how we read when we embark on "the odyssey of reading."Provides valuable insights into why and how we readAddresses issues and problems in the contemporary university and offers insights into the futureExplores the life of the mind, the rewards and joys of committed teaching, and the relationship between teaching and scholarship in the contemporary universityDraws on the author's forty years of teaching experienceFollowing his long term commitment to close reading and historicism, Schwarz shows how the best literary criticism must both respect text and contextContains insightful and important readings of a broad range of texts, including those by Joyce, Woolf, Conrad, Forster, Gordimer, and Spiegelman's Maus