literature

Although this book was written to introduce students of medieval literature to the subject, it is far more than a book about books. Lewis makes it clear that, to understand men of another time, we must first understand their view of the world, the influences that bore upon them, and how they dealt with them. Most interesting is his use of a 'model' to describe the medieval authors' universe (for only the learned would endeavour to describe a universe), for in our day, thirty-five years after The Discarded Image was written, we place great credence in computer models. Well worth your time, if only to show that there are more ways than one to look at - shall we call it creation? - and there may be truth in more than one of them. We must not lose track, in this hypercritical age, of these different models and modes of thought; it is well, indeed, to remember that a man of 1400 is not to be judged by the standards of 1999. Nor is a modern man to be judged by the standards of half a millennium ago.

This book is an utter, unqualified delight.

That C.S.Lewis was a fine writer is not open to dispute. It is also no secret that he was a master of discursive, analytical, sympathetic literary criticism. (The collection of articles published posthumously as "On Literature" by Walter Hooper contains some fine examples.)

We are also only too well acquainted with Lewis the bully, abusing his prodigious gifts as a debater and marshaller of arguments in the service of his religion. "Mere Christianity" is an overwhelming argument for God - but it leaves the bitter aftertaste of intellectual coercion.

In "The Discarded Image", he does not wish to convince us of anything. He only wishes to explain. We are invited along on a tour of the beliefs and opinions about the world held in the Middle Ages. (The travel-guide metaphor is Lewis's own, from the Introduction.) The effect is of an immensely well-informed and articulate man discursing on his favourite subject.

Mere knowledge and enthusiasm on the part of the author would not be enough to make this unusual book interesting. It is Lewis's combination of strengths as writer that bring Medieval cosmology, religion and science to life. But such is his skill that we almost don't notice what has gone into the presentation. Only when we reflect on what must have been required to organise facts, determine what is essential, leave out what isn't, use analogies, draw distinctions, make comparisons and follow lines of thought does the achievement really sink in.

For example, his description of Arisotlean astronomy and its legacy to the Middle Ages is a masterpiece of brevity. It tells us everything we need to know for what follows, and nothing more; yet simutaneously we experience a sense of the vastness of the subject-matter. Our curiosity is awakened, our immediate needs satisfied and our imagination stimulated. THIS is writing!

The section on Mother Nature shows Lewis the philologist to great effect. He first has to disengage our minds from the modern conception of Nature, which he does by investigating what we actually do mean by the word nowadays and how that has evolved over three hundred years. At that point, we are ready to understand the entirely different relationship to the world that was conveyed by the same word in the Middle Ages.

Throughout, there is not a wasted word or an unnecessary turn of phrase.

Enjoy!

"The Discarded Image" first appeared in print in 1964, the year following Lewis' death. It first appeared in paperback in 1967, and my copy of that edition is heavily marked up and falling to pieces after years of use, in High School and as an undergraduate and graduate student. It is safe to conclude that I am an admirer of the book. (Also of Lewis' fiction, and his other works of criticism; with a few exceptions, the books on Christianity which made him widely known are of little interest to me.)

It contains the substance (and presumably the final wording) of Lewis' lectures introducing medieval and Renaissance literature to students at Cambridge (and, presumably, earlier in his career at Oxford). It is admirably concise, remarkably clear, and, for anyone who does not remember that it is only an introduction, at times frustratingly limited. In a very few pages he encapsulates some of the main features of thought between, roughly, the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the publication of "Paradise Lost". It represents the essence of a lifetime of actually reading the literature, and he is able to illustrate his points with convincing, and sometimes rather obscure, examples.

On the basis of my own experience, "The Discarded Image" is helpful not only in understanding the literature of the Christian West during the Middle Ages, but also a lot of Jewish and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Islamic literature from the same period. Ptolemy and Aristotle, at least, seem to have been everywhere.

In this context, it is perhaps fair to warn potential readers coming to the book directly from Lewis-the-Christian that he displays throughout a remarkable sympathy for a variety of views (pagan, Neo-Platonic, medieval Catholic, and so forth) which they may find disturbing. Education, not edification, is his primary focus. (Of course, there are those who refuse to consider Lewis a real Christian at all, but an agent of the Devil, and possibly even the Pope -- but they probably wouldn't dream of opening this book, anyway.)

To use a catch-phrase introduced to scholarship in 1962 by Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions," Lewis is presenting an "Old Paradigm" of the Universe, the very presuppositions of which have been replaced by a series of "New Paradigms" during the last four centuries. It describes a vast but finite world of natural hierarchies, in which much that we find commonplace was rare (and vice versa). It is an effort to equip the student to think and perhaps even feel in medieval, not modern, terms. I can think of no one who has so successfully evoked the sensation of living in a Ptolemaic or Aristotelian cosmos.

By the time this book appeared, Lewis' well-earned reputation as a Christian apologist had largely overtaken his status as a prominent critic of medieval and renaissance literature (established by "The Allegory of Love" in the 1930s). Although "The Discarded Image" has generally been in print, it never seems to have attained the prominence some (myself included) think it deserves. Even Norman Cantor's praise for the book in "Inventing the Middle Ages" is moderated by complaints about what it doesn't contain, and the dispatch-like brevity imposed by its origin. It is nice to think that the present "Canto" edition represents a determination to keep the book available.

With reference to an observation by another reviewer: I can sympathize with anyone found quoting "The Discarded Image" without attribution. After numerous readings, I have sometimes found it hard to remember just where an idea or turn of phrase came from, only to recognize it there while looking for something else.

Hyman Kaplan will win the heart of the most cold hearted reader. The honest enthusiasm of the title character fills the book. You will find yourself writing your name in bright crayons for months after reading.

The Education of Hyman Kaplan is an almost lost creation of Leo Rosten, a book I discovered a few years ago. On the face this book is a comedy of language set among the immigrant students of an adult language school in New York. There is no doubt the Rosten has a flair for bringing out the hilarious subtleties of the English language, and the book moves so quickly it seems unfairly short. Mr. Parkhill's beginners grade classroom is the scene of countless battle and wars, where the students struggle against syntax, diction, and each other. Some of the botched quotes from Shakespeare are masterpieces in themselves. I had no idea a book of this kind could be such a riot, and never knew our language was so close to lunacy.

The hapless hero, Kaplan, provides a wonderful vehicle for Rosten to maneuver through the pitfalls and traps of the many idiomed English Language. However, behind the books' mangled metaphors, garbled grammar, and reinvented history, lies the world of the immigrant in New York City. The light-hearted episodes are interspersed with an occasional look into the difficult life of a brand new American. These chapters show the optimism and the will to succeed that Kaplan's fellow students brought with them to America. Kaplan himself is an emblem of endurance; forever doomed to stay in the beginners grade, yet never despairing of the always elusive verb tenses.

This book has only one "weakness": it does not cater to cynicism. It looks ahead, from the eyes of each of the characters, to a better time, a better place, with better pronunciation. This is a glimpse of the Dream of America that I had not seen, a different view that fascinated me. I think the strangest thing is that the book is never preachy. It is likely this is because Rosten wrote this book as a mature writer, with many other works under his belt. His tendency to constant revision has left this book a polished gem. Read, laugh, and enjoy.

Think you can read an uproariously funny book without laughing out loud? Think again. Adventures of an English-as-a-second-language class for new immigrants in 1950's America.

This is the perfect way to share wisdom from women of many ages with any young girl in your life. The book is not only a compilation of stories, insights, and thought provoking ideas from women and girls across the nation, it is also a place for girls to write their own thoughts and questions. And the best part for those giving the book as a gift is the chance to add your own personal wisdom at the end of each chapter. What a concept??!!!!! Girls need books like this to help them negotiate the complexities of becoming a woman and women need books like this to remind them of the wisdom they hold.

Girls to Women, Women to Girls is an excellent collection of thoughts, stories, and poems from girls and women around the globe. I love it, and have read it like, ten times. It talks about things like what it is to be a female, peer pressure and cliques, teen crisis, and sex and virginity. I found it very inspirational and encouraging. It doesn't even really confine to teens and pre-teens either. It is, in my opinion, a great book for all ages. it's a book that grows with you. I VERY stronly recommend this book.

I absolutly love this book! It answered all of my questions about becoming a woman and about how to be safe under pressure. It has different sections about different thing that girls want to know. It even has a section on how men feel about the things that their daughters are going through. I recomend this book to anybody who has questions about being older.

Excellent book. The characters are SOOO well developed and the insight into the human mind so profound that I will have a hard time picking up a typical murder mystery again. I spent much time pondering some of the magical paragraphs and exhalting in the fantastic ending. It is great after reading the "Da Vinci Code" since it also considers the true origins of parts of the Bible. This is a great read and a great book club selection.

The blurb on the back of this book says that it is a Biblical story, a modern retelling of the Cain and Able story. But it is more than just a clever satire. It is the story of humanity as Steinbeck perceives it, told as an allegory through two generations of two families in the Salinas Valley of California. John Steinbeck reached very far into himself to write this book. He has an incredble insight into human emotions - as I was reading his simple and beautiful prose I felt that he must have known me intimately to write to me so succintly and so personally. As it was written fairly late in his life and his career, one gets the impression that he wanted to tell one final, ultimate story that would last forever. This may be as close to that story as one man can get.

The last book I read was Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
The next book I plan to read is Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

These book is one of the greatest clasics you can come across. It is a serene insight in relationship on man-women and brotherhood issues. Though is not very crystal on answering the question why the main character is so sentimentaly naive and as such against all odds, but still the situation, the consequences of it are colorfuly depicted. It's a book how Good can survive against the Evil but still it gets the shorter end of it. There is no ideal or divine realization that good will win overall. Being truly and naivly good doesn't mean that you will be awerded for it and that a true love can win at the end. It can be farse to itself.

This book was incredible. I throughly enjoyed it. I also read ' Wonder', which I must say is good, but this book is so wonderful. It touched my heart. The main character reminds me of my good friend, except that her friends aren't as mean to her as Molly's. I really enjoyed this, and I think every teenage girl can totally relate to feeling like the odd one.

This is definitly one of my favorite books I have ever read. No other author writes about teen girls as well as Rachael Vail does. This book is so true, it was like I was reading about myself. It is about a girl named Molly who is struggling with feelings, friendships, weight, family, boys, her identity, and life in general. I definetly hope you read this book (you will love it if you are anything like me!) and every other book by Rachael Vail as well. This is one of the few books I truly loved reading.

This made me think back to my teenage days- and I could totally relate! It describes, in great detail, things a girl feels when she's growing up; how we have the ability to obsess over the silliest things, even though they don't seem so silly at the time.
I found the book amongst one of my friends' stuff, picked it up, and literally couldn't put it down. It hooked me from the beginning. Reading this makes you feel like you're not the only [odd one] in the world, and that other people have problems, too.
I also like the fact that it wasn't "sugar-coated." The conversation between the friends sounded like how my friends and I have talked. All in all...GREAT BOOK!

I consider myself a connosieur of the classics, so when I heard of an ancient novel concerned with sex, illicit sex, and illicit donkey sex, I decided to take a closer look.

And I'm glad that I did. At the back end of the classical Western literary tradition of silliness, which includes such hallowed humorists as Chaucer, Bocaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, and, in its divine form, Shakespeare, we find the one tale that may have excited them all--Lucius Apuleius's Golden Ass.

The Golden Ass is filled with adventure, suspense, humor, and nonsense. I had a grin on my face most of the way through, and I got the feeling that the author did too. Tip o' the hat to Robert Graves for delivering an authentic translation that brings us Apuleius in his bawdy best.

The only thing I found occasionally irritating was that, like Cervantes, Apuleius has a tendency to digress. Big time. He inserts the entire myth of Cupid and Psyche right into the middle of the narrative, for example. Does this add to the mythological message of the whole? Probably, but it subtracts from the fantastic flow of the story. My urgent plea to Apuleius, were he alive today, would be, "Stick to the ass!"

There are a number of reasons that traditionally bring people to this book: to study Classical Rome, classic literature, mythology, psychology... maybe you're curious about the intimate lives of donkeys. Whatever has brought you to this novel, now that you're going to read it, perhaps the best thing to do is to take the advice of the author himself, who says, "Read on and enjoy yourself!"

I thought only cats were supposed to have nine lives, but this donkey has at least that many. This book is great fun, I couldn't put it down for too long, and it is incredible that something written so long ago (18 centuries?) can be so accessible, captivating, and hilarious to a modern reader. The events in The Golden Ass resemble the ribald, bawdy exuberance of the Decameron, and no doubt Boccaccio was somewhat inspired by the writings of Apuleius. According to the introduction, the adjective "golden" in the title implies "the ass par excellence" or "the best of all stories about an ass." The story follows the misadventures of Lucius, an enterprising young man who gets far too close to the world of magic, is transformed into a donkey and is constantly thwarted in his attempt to procure the antidote to his assness. It's human mind trapped in donkey bawdy! Totally imaginative, classically written, hilarious fun. As a writer, Apuleius was MILLENNIUMS ahead of his time! (Note: my review is based on the Robert Graves translation, rather than the William Adlington).

This is an extremely fun read. It flows beautifully, and will keep you turning the pages. It also is valuable historically because it offers some insight into the lives of the lower classes, which tended to be ignored by Roman historians such as Tacitus or Dio Cassius.

However, one word of warning - while the Graves translation is very enjoyable and easy to read, my Roman History prof said that it was not a particularly loyal translation. So, if that matters to you, you may want to look elsewhere - but I doubt any other translation will read as well as this one.

It has a clear and simple explanation of Love from the Christian perspective that is too often clouded or forgotten through the politics of our world today. Read it for inspiration or to improve your expression of love.

I have always been told that faith is the greatest thing a Christian can have. I have read 1 Corinthians 13 many times before, put I just thought of it as poetic. I never realized it tells us plainly LOVE is greater than faith and hope. Without love our faith and our hope is worthless junk. This book is an easy read, and short, but full of insight and intelligence. It gives the reader a new perspective on the greatest thing a Christian can have; LOVE

I read this book at least once a year to keep me focused on what's important in my life. Love is the greatest, most important force in our universe. This book explains the essense of love and provides profound insights on it purpose and how we may employ it in our daily lives. Read it, learn it, and do it. Your life will be fulfilled!

The third volume of In search of Lost Time begins with the moving of Marcel's family to an apartment in a palace, next to the which Charlus lives. This is where Marcel begins to deal with the highest society: the Guermantes family, which seemed so distant to him in his child fantasies, becomes soon part of his life. He goes to parties and meetings, where he can see Mme Cambremer, duchess Orianne and her husband, Charlus, Odette, Swann, etc. The words of the narrator are as thorough as his sight, and he describes for pages and pages the dialogues and behaviours that take place during such encounters. In this volume is where we begin to find the diferent sexual tendencies that will be later explored. As Marcel keeps visiting Saint-Loup, Mr. Charlus develops an interest in Marcel, therefore he begins to play a series of odd games: Charlus will have outbursts of rage as Marcel's shallowness becomes clear to the count.
The snobism and everchanging criteria, through the which political circles consider someone as part of the group of desireable relations, are shown through the detailed depiction of the Dreyfuss affair. The fears of society are suddenly embodied in the character of this german diplomatic, who apparently is spying on the french government. But, even worse, he is a jew. The colliding opinions about this affair divide society. In the midst of this social confusion, Marcel is but a quiet witness, whose interventions seem to stop in invitations and references to other great names of society. One of his favorite activities during this parties is to find and reconstruct the family ties between the different participants. An interesting relationship develops between Marcel and Orianne and her husband, while Charlus finds this to be of bad taste. Marcel will know through these people the details surrounding Saint-Loup's romance with an "indecent" dancer. He knew something from the days he spent visiting his friends while he was in service.
By the end of this volume we get to see Swann's decadence in the high circles, while his wife, Odette, seems to gain more terrain everyday. Swann tries to mantain his contact with the Guermantes, but they are less interested in him as time goes by... and not even his revelation of being in the route of death, due to an ailment, captures their interest. Even more, they don't believe him.
Proust keeps working in describing the defyning coordenates of this world of looks and absurd, hollow judgements. The life of the court parties is ruled by worldly signs, theatrical effects and empty forms. Although the character's fantasies surrounding the name of the Guermantes crumbles after he meets them and find them to be... just humans (and not the corporeal reality behind the images he used to see with endearment in Combray); although this fact, he is more and more fascinated by their importance between the other aristocrats. His desire is renewed by the inclusion of a third party that desires to establish contact, or to hold good relations with the Guermantes. It is the game of snobism, in which fear seems to be the main tool.

In the previous two volumes of IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME, we have seen the young Marcel fantasize about love (in the persons of Gilberte and Albertine) and high society (in the person of the Duchesse de Guermantes). The bulk of THE GUERMANTES WAY's 819 pages is concerned with two parties involving the glitterati of fin-de-siecle Paris.

At the party of the literary Mme de Villeparisis, Marcel gains his first admittance to the world of the nobility and gets invited to an evening of his prized Dutchess, whom he had gazed on from afar when she attended church services in Combray, amid the tombs of her ancestors. Sometimes, however, when you get your heart's desire, there is that nagging question: "Is this all there is?"

At one point in the latter party, Swann says to Marcel that "one can't have a thousand years of feudalism in one's blood with impunity." The novel ends with the Guermantes about to leave for yet a more empyrean social gathering, to which Marcel is not even sure he is invited. (As we see in the next volume, he is invited and does attend.) At the very end, the Duke puts off seeing a dying friend and begins carping about his wife's choice of shoes.

We see the beginnings of Marcel's disenchantment with the social scene. Since this volume covers such a short span of time, we do not yet see the effect of his grandmother's death on the young narrator. We leave him, stunned and confused, at the threshhold of a personal triumph that has already lost much of its luster for him.

As I re-read Proust's great series, I am struck by how much I missed the first time I read it years ago. Many reviewers are struck by the length of the scenes describing the parties, but now I find that there is so much going on, and so many undercurrents, that the interior action passes quickly. Most of the action takes place in Marcel's mind as he encounters these gods of society and their hangers-on as they duel for position in their circles.

"Thus I beheld the pair of them," muses Marcel, "divorced from that name Guermantes in which long ago I had imagined them leading an unimaginable life, now just like other men and other women...."

In "The Guermantes Way," the third volume of "In Search of Lost Time," Proust's nameless narrator has reached his teenage years and continues to observe the world around him as inspiration for his planned career in literature. His family's relocation to a new apartment building in Paris, the Hotel de Guermantes, affords him the opportunity to acquaint himself with the Faubourg Saint-Germain and what he imagines to be the fashionable, intellectual side of the city's society, personified by the Duke and Duchess de Guermantes.

The narrator's fascination with the Duchess could be described as an infatuation far surpassing that he used to have of Gilberte, the daughter of his parents' friend Charles Swann. Sickly and meek, he has trouble making a positive impression on the Duchess in his chance encounters with her, but he is persistent. He happens to have befriended her nephew Robert de Saint-Loup, a young military officer, from whom he politely requests a proper introduction by claiming a common interest in the work of a painter named Elstir. Through Robert's help, the young narrator gains admission to the high society of his dreams, which gradually destruct into the apprehension that the rich can be frivolous and boring.

As Balzac's interest was in the depiction of Paris society as a "human comedy" in all its colors and movements, Proust's palette is much more subtle and sensitive but no less broad, taking prose about as far as it can go in the description of the intimacy of all the various complex emotions. Cruelty, for example, is a simple subject, but Proust's portrayal of the nasty trick that Robert's girlfriend Rachel, a full-time actress and part-time prostitute, plays on one of her rivals, allows the narrator an inconceivably deep meditation on the ugliness of conceit. Similarly, the narrator's unreasonably lengthy account of his grandmother's stroke and subsequent death is actually a brilliant exposition on the agony of mortality.

The events of "The Guermantes Way" play against the backdrop of the Dreyfus affair, and Proust remarkably demonstrates the heavy impact this incident had on the society of the day, bringing to the surface the particular virulence of French anti-semitism, usually latent, occasionally blatant. Society is divided between pro-Dreyfus and anti-Dreyfus factions, Proust's sympathetic narrator being of the former but, like most "Dreyfusards," not too vocal about the matter. Proust uses a Jewish character, a rising dramatist named Bloch, as a token of the conflict, exhibiting him as an object of a peculiar French attitude that is less racial hatred than exotic curiosity.

Swann, himself of Jewish heritage, makes an appearance towards the end of the volume to remind the reader of his long relationship with the humble narrator. Roughly I detect an analogy, not easily sustained by the evidence presented in this review but palpable in the text nonetheless, of their friendship with that of James Joyce's Leopold Bloom, also a Jew in a hostile environment, and Stephen Dedalus. What Proust and Joyce really have in common, though, is their ability to forge bold new forms of literature that explore aspects of life never before exposed on the printed page.

This lovely book has beautiful, bright graphics, as pleasing to a 2 year old as to a 4 year old and beyond! The text is clear and informative. A pleasure to read!

The bright colors and clear illustrations immediately attracted my two year old son. He flipped through the pages, identifying the numbers and pictures that he knew. As we read it together, I started to introduce the pictures that he was unfamiliar with, and some of the Hebrew and Yiddish words. As he grows, I can teach him more of the different languages, and read the Hannukah story with him. I think this is a beautiful book, one that my son will use and learn from for years to come.

Because my kids really love this book, I brought a copy to Israel to give to their cousins. Had I known the kids were going to fight over it, I'd have brought one for each of them!

Truly a book all can enjoy! It is touching, inspiring, and positive. Alex shows us that anything can be achieved, no matter what obstacles face you, if you work hard. I liked that he shared a true story of his childhood, not some candy-coated, "My life has always been great" thing. This is the kind of book that inspires children to do their best and motivates adults to keep working to reach their goals!

This is a wonderful book. This Book shows how even through adversity you can still rise above, and achieve success. It is a book for all ages, Alex had difficult times, but he did not let it stop him..that is an inspiration.

I loved this book because I got a chance to learn about Alex's life and how he handled his dad leaving. I like how he expresses his feelings and doesn't keep his feelings inside. I would recommend this book to people of all ages.