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Why Literature Is Bad for You

Peter Thorpe

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Description:As a professor of literature and former believer in the sublime and redeeming qualities of art, Peter Thorpe is now deadly serious about his disillusionment with those who live and work with literature and the other arts. His ideas here are based on two major assumptions: 1) that art is not an isolated entity but an influential part of our environment, especially for artists and scholars, and 2) that art is essentially a means of approval in that the skill and talent of the artist tend to make the subject, no matter how negative, more attractive than it really is. Since, negative subjects make for the most interesting reading, he contends that most literature is predominantly about pain and conflict and that even a happy ending doesn't offset the overall negative effect on the reader.Why Literature Is Bad for You is divided into five sections: Seven Types of Immaturity, Seven Avenues to Unawareness, Five Avenues Of Unhappiness, Four Ways to Decrease Our Mental Powers and Four Ways of Failing to Communicate. Each section develops a set of related detrimental effects that literature can have when taken too seriously and indulged in too intensely. Thorpe's reasoning is supported by references to the greatest works of literature and anecdotes from his own experience in teaching at five campuses around the country. They show the essential nature of art can encourage and exaggerate the worst tendencies in people, leading them to believe naive and unrealistic ideas, covet impossible dreams, rage against imaginary wrongs, etc. He is not suggesting that literature should be banished from our educational system and he certainly is not suggesting that a massive book burning is in order, what he does encourage is a closer, harder look at our beliefs about literature and art in general to see what effects they really have on us. Examples like these are given in Why Literature Is Bad for You: the liberal, open-minded professor whose son stole a dozen cars in one night and then committed suicide; the young woman who left her husband and a series of other men while pursuing her passion for Victorian novels; the mad poet who started raving in the midst of his lecture and had to be carried away; the hothead whose accusations of racism ruined a fellow professor's career; and the hypocrite who denounced sex in his lectures but couldn't keep his hands off female students. While the book may anger or infuriate some, no one will be able to deny that its arguments are not without merit or that a re-examination of the role literature ought to play in the educational and cultural process is out of order.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Why Literature Is Bad for You. To get started finding Why Literature Is Bad for You, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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ISBN: 0882297457

Description: As a professor of literature and former believer in the sublime and redeeming qualities of art, Peter Thorpe is now deadly serious about his disillusionment with those who live and work with literature and the other arts. His ideas here are based on two major assumptions: 1) that art is not an isolated entity but an influential part of our environment, especially for artists and scholars, and 2) that art is essentially a means of approval in that the skill and talent of the artist tend to make the subject, no matter how negative, more attractive than it really is. Since, negative subjects make for the most interesting reading, he contends that most literature is predominantly about pain and conflict and that even a happy ending doesn't offset the overall negative effect on the reader.Why Literature Is Bad for You is divided into five sections: Seven Types of Immaturity, Seven Avenues to Unawareness, Five Avenues Of Unhappiness, Four Ways to Decrease Our Mental Powers and Four Ways of Failing to Communicate. Each section develops a set of related detrimental effects that literature can have when taken too seriously and indulged in too intensely. Thorpe's reasoning is supported by references to the greatest works of literature and anecdotes from his own experience in teaching at five campuses around the country. They show the essential nature of art can encourage and exaggerate the worst tendencies in people, leading them to believe naive and unrealistic ideas, covet impossible dreams, rage against imaginary wrongs, etc. He is not suggesting that literature should be banished from our educational system and he certainly is not suggesting that a massive book burning is in order, what he does encourage is a closer, harder look at our beliefs about literature and art in general to see what effects they really have on us. Examples like these are given in Why Literature Is Bad for You: the liberal, open-minded professor whose son stole a dozen cars in one night and then committed suicide; the young woman who left her husband and a series of other men while pursuing her passion for Victorian novels; the mad poet who started raving in the midst of his lecture and had to be carried away; the hothead whose accusations of racism ruined a fellow professor's career; and the hypocrite who denounced sex in his lectures but couldn't keep his hands off female students. While the book may anger or infuriate some, no one will be able to deny that its arguments are not without merit or that a re-examination of the role literature ought to play in the educational and cultural process is out of order.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Why Literature Is Bad for You. To get started finding Why Literature Is Bad for You, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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Why Literature Is Bad for You

Why Literature Is Bad for You

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