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Why Read the Classics is a collection of thirty-six essays by Italo Calvino on 'his' classics: the writers, poets and scientists who had meant most to him at different stages of his life. After the title essay, which explores several original definitions of what makes a classic, the pieces range in time from antiquity (Homer, Ovid) through early modern and Enlightenment Europe (Ariosto, Defoe, Diderot, Voltaire) to the masters of the nineteenth-century novel (Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Dickens, Tolstoy, Conrad), before dealing with Calvino's early American mentors (Twain, James, Hemingway) and contemporaries such as Borges, Pasternak and Queneau. The essays also offer the most comprehensive sample yet available of Calvino the literary critic in substantial articles which he wrote over a period of thirty years from the 1950s to his death in 1985. Why Read the Classics constitutes Calvino's literary canon, sheds fascinating light on the key texts which influenced this major twentieth-century fantasist and postmodernist, and proves that even if he had not become an internationally renowned fiction writer Calvino would have ranked among the most interesting essayists and critics of the twentieth century.
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'Enthusiasm and intelligence: these are the essential qualities of the critic. Calvino, himself a novelist of rare quality, possessed both generously. This is a book to read for itself, and also because it will send you back to other books to read, either again in a new way, or for the first time... Superb' Daily Telegraph 'This volume itself is a classic book at bedtime, a seductive invitation to forgotten opportunities or rereading' The Times
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--'One of the most inspiring justifications of great literature I've ever come upon' Sunday Telegraph--'This volume itself is a classic book at bedtime, a seductive invitation to forgotten opportunities or rereading' The Times
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- PublisherJonathan Cape Ltd
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0224037293
- ISBN 13 9780224037297
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages288
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Why Read the Classics?
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. x / 278 pp black cloth gilt title, red endpapers. Book and wrapper clean and sound. Seller Inventory # 038823
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Book Description Second Edition. Fine cloth copy in an equally fine dust-wrapper. Particularly well-preserved overall; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Physical description: x, 277p. ; 22cm. Subjects: Canon (Literature). Classic books -- History and criticism. 1 Kg. Seller Inventory # 307002
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Why read the classics?
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Book Description Second Edition. Fine cloth copy in an equally fine dust-wrapper. Particularly well-preserved overall; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Physical description: x, 277p. ; 22cm. Subjects: Canon (Literature). Classic books -- History and criticism. 1 Kg. Seller Inventory # 307002
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Why Read the Classics?
Published by
Jonathan Cape Ltd
(1999)
ISBN 10: 0224037293
ISBN 13: 9780224037297
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Book Description hardcover. Condition: Good. Ex-library book, usual marking. Clean copy in good condition. With Dust Cover. Quick dispatch from UK seller. Seller Inventory # mon0000456841
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