ENGLISH

No Island Is an Island: Four Glances at English Literature in a World Perspective

By Carlo Ginzburg

Book information

Publisher
Columbia University Press
Year
2000
ISBN
0231116284, 9780231116282
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
6 MB (5857863 bytes)
Series
Italian Academy Lectures
Pages
128\152
Time added
2020-09-07 14:18:22

Description

In No Island Is an Island an internationally renowned historian approaches four works of English literature from unexpected angles. Following in the footsteps of a sixteenth-century Spanish bishop we gain a fresh view of Thomas More's Utopia. Comparing Bayle's Dictionary with Tristram Shandy we suddenly enter into Laurence Sterne's mind. A seemingly narrow dispute among Elizabethan critics for and against rhyme turns into an early debate on English national identity. Robert Louis Stevenson's story "The Bottle Imp" throws a new light on Bronislaw Malinowsky's attempts to discover meaning in the "kula" trading system among the Trobriand Islanders. Throughout, Ginzburg's inquiry is informed by his unique microhistorical sensibility, his attention to minute detail, and his extraordinary synthesizing imagination.

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