Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
In this coherent, intense study, Naomi Lebowitz defines and explores what she calls "the philosophy of literary amateurism." With persuasive readings of the works of major international writers of the Western tradition, Lebowitz passionately argues that all great writing is guided by a moral and temperamental complexity and richness.
Lebowitz defines literary amateurism as an attitude of anti-professionalism that allows a writer to engage and represent experience with a vulnerable subtlety and imagination.
Citing Montaigne as the father of this philosophy, Lebowitz uncovers the moral implications of aesthetic postures in those who have used his patterns - Emerson, Balzac, Dickens, Henry James, Conrad, William James, Santayana, Wallace Stevens, Virginia Woolf, and Italo Svevo - comparing their work to that of more self-consciously professional writers, wary of seductive adulterations of art by life, like Flaubert, Taine, Rousseau, and Proust.
In a hyper-professional age of criticism marked by formulaic and political diction and syntax, Lebowitz tries to recover the amateur perspective naturally carried by great literature's form and play. The Philosophy of Literary Amateurism makes a lasting contribution to the recovery of more generous relations between life and literature.
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
Previews available in: English
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1
The philosophy of literary amateurism
1994, University of Missouri Press
in English
082620970X 9780826209702
|
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 115-121) and index.
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?July 15, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
December 30, 2021 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
December 4, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Added subjects from MARC records. |
April 28, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Linked existing covers to the work. |
December 10, 2009 | Created by WorkBot | add works page |