T. S. Eliot was raised in the Unitarian faith of his family in St. Louis but drifted away from their beliefs while studying philosophy, mysticism, and anthropology at Harvard. During a year in Paris, he became involved with a group of Catholic writers and subsequently went through a gradual conversion to Catholic Christianity.Many studies of Eliot's writings have mentioned his religious beliefs, but most have failed to give the topic due weight, and many have misunderstood or misrep...

This book offers a history of literary criticism from Plato to the present, arguing that this history can best be seen as a dialogue among three traditions - the Platonic, Neoplatonic, and the humanistic, originated by Aristotle. There are many histories of literary criticism, but this is the first to clarify our understanding of the many seemingly incommensurable approaches employed over the centuries by reference to the three traditions. Making its case by careful analyses of individual ...

The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film...

Offering a comprehensive view of the South's literary landscape, past and present, this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture celebrates the region's ever-flourishing literary culture and recognizes the ongoing evolution of the southern literary canon. As new writers draw upon and reshape previous traditions, southern literature has broadened and deepened its connections not just to the American literary mainstream but also to world literatures--a development thoughtf...

Born in Missouri at the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas Hart Benton would become the most notorious and celebrated painter America had ever seen. The first artist to make the cover of Time, he was a true original: an heir to both the rollicking populism of his father's political family and the quiet life of his Appalachian grandfather. In his twenties, he would find his calling in New York, where he was drawn to memories of his small-town youth—and to visions of the American...

Edna Ferber's Hollywood reveals one of the most influential artistic relationships of the twentieth century—the four-decade partnership between historical novelist Edna Ferber and the Hollywood studios. Ferber was one of America's most controversial popular historians, a writer whose uniquely feminist, multiracial view of the national past deliberately clashed with traditional narratives of white masculine power. Hollywood paid premium sums to adapt her novels, creating some of the most me...

John Joseph Mathews (1894–1979) is one of Oklahoma’s most revered twentieth-century authors. An Osage Indian, he was also one of the first Indigenous authors to gain national renown. Yet fame did not come easily to Mathews, and his personality was full of contradictions. In this captivating biography, Michael Snyder provides the first book-length account of this fascinating figure.Known as “Jo” to all his friends, Mathews had a multifaceted identity. A novelist, naturalist, biograp...

Richard Wright’s dramatic imagination guided the creation of his masterpieces Native Son and Black Boy and helped shape Wright’s long-overlooked writing for theater and other performative mediums.Drawing on decades of research and interviews with Wright’s family and Wright scholars, Bruce Allen Dick uncovers the theatrical influence on Wright’s oeuvre--from his 1930s boxing journalism to his unpublished one-acts on returning Black GIs in WWII to his unproduced pag...

The Storied South features the voices--by turn searching and honest, coy and scathing--of twenty-six of the most luminous artists and thinkers in the American cultural firmament, from Eudora Welty, Pete Seeger, and Alice Walker to William Eggleston, Bobby Rush, and C. Vann Woodward. Masterfully drawn from one-on-one interviews conducted by renowned folklorist William Ferris over the past forty years, the book reveals how storytelling is viscerally tied to southern identity and how...

Richard W. Etulain examines the emergence of Pacific Northwest prose beginning in the early nineteenth century up to the present. The book provides an introductory overview to a vast subject through “illuminative moments” that illustrate major shifts in the literary history of the region. The book’s focus is on novels, histories, and other nonfiction works that trace Pacific Northwest prose in chronological order through three periods: the frontier, regional, and post-regional eras.

The Bhagavad Gita is the best known of all the Indian scriptures, and Eknath Easwaran’s best-selling translation is reliable, readable, and profound.Easwaran's 55-page introduction places the Bhagavad Gita in its historical setting, and brings out the universality and timelessness of its teachings. Chapter introductions clarify key concepts, and notes and a glossary explain Sanskrit terms.Easwaran grew up in the Hindu tradition in India, and learned Sanskri...

Written in the form of debates, Great Dialogues of Plato comprises the most influential body of philosophy of the Western world—covering every subject from art and beauty to virtue and the nature of love.