How to Do Things with Fictions

· Oxford University Press
E‑kniha
266
Počet strán
Vhodné
Hodnotenia a recenzie nie sú overené  Ďalšie informácie

Táto e‑kniha

Why does Mark's Jesus speak in parables? Why does Plato's Socrates make bad arguments? Why are Beckett's novels so inscrutable? And why don't stage magicians even pretend to summon spirits anymore? In a series of captivating chapters on Mark, Plato, Beckett, Mallarmé, and Chaucer, Joshua Landy not only answers these questions but explains why they are worth asking in the first place. Witty and approachable, How to Do Things with Fictions challenges the widespread assumption that literary texts must be informative or morally improving in order to be of any real benefit. It reveals that authors are sometimes best thought of not as entertainers or as educators but as personal trainers of the brain, putting their willing readers through exercises designed to fortify specific mental capacities, from form-giving to equanimity, from reason to faith. Delivering plenty of surprises along the way--that moral readings of literature can be positively dangerous; that the parables were deliberately designed to be misunderstood; that Plato knowingly sets his main character up for a fall; that metaphor is powerfully connected to religious faith; that we can sustain our beliefs even when we suspect them to be illusions--How to Do Things with Fictions convincingly shows that our best allies in the struggle for more rigorous thinking, deeper faith, richer experience, and greater peace of mind may well be the imaginative writings sitting on our shelves.

O autorovi

Joshua Landy is the Andrew B. Hammond Professor of French and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, where he co-founded and co-directs the Initiative in Philosophy and Literature. He is author of Philosophy as Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust and coeditor, with Michael Saler, of The Re-Enchantment of the World: Secular Magic in a Rational Age.

Ohodnoťte túto elektronickú knihu

Povedzte nám svoj názor.

Informácie o dostupnosti

Smartfóny a tablety
Nainštalujte si aplikáciu Knihy Google Play pre AndroidiPad/iPhone. Automaticky sa synchronizuje s vaším účtom a umožňuje čítať online aj offline, nech už ste kdekoľvek.
Laptopy a počítače
Audioknihy zakúpené v službe Google Play môžete počúvať prostredníctvom webového prehliadača v počítači.
Čítačky elektronických kníh a ďalšie zariadenia
Ak chcete tento obsah čítať v zariadeniach využívajúcich elektronický atrament, ako sú čítačky e‑kníh Kobo, musíte stiahnuť príslušný súbor a preniesť ho do svojho zariadenia. Pri prenose súborov do podporovaných čítačiek e‑kníh postupujte podľa podrobných pokynov v centre pomoci.