Why Read the Classics?

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Author: Italo CalvinoPublisher: VintageYear: 2000Language: EnglishPages: 278ISBN/UPC (if available): 0099284898 DescriptionIn this collection of thirty-six essays on his classics, Italo Calvino explores several original definitions of what makes a classic, and surveys works that range in time from antiquity and early modern Europe, to the masters of the nineteenth-century novel and his early American mentors, through to his contemporaries. Why Read the Classics? Constitutes Calvino's literary canon and sheds fascinating light on the key texts that influenced this major twentieth-century novelist, confirming his position too as one of the most interesting essayists and critics of his time.REVIEWSThis volume is itself a classic book at bedtime, a seductive invitation to forgotten opportunities of rereading.-The TimesFascinating, 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 TelegraphA primer of the highest quality of 31 classic writers, blissfully free of academic jargon and journalistic glibness, and its erudition is matched by a real, if becomingly unflaunted passion for literature.-Evening StandardFor all his serious considerations of the literature we call classic, of all his deep insights, Calvino is a writer whom we can read just for the fun brilliant.-ObserverI would recommend this book to anyone who is puzzled over the distinction between a work of literature and a plausible fake, Calvino shows by example that the classics matter.-The TimesA great collection, posthumously put together and admirably translated For admirers of Calvino, the collection is valuable for the light it throws on his influences, one of the most inspiring, and least cliché-ridden justifications of great literature I've ever come upon.-Sunday TelegraphAn ideal mixture of imaginative insight, intelligent sympathy and conveyed joy, The breadth of Calvino's enthusiasms is staggering, freshly and fluently translated, this work is a treasury of arresting, provocative comparisons and judgments.-HeraldContentsTranslator's IntroductionPrefaceWhy Read the Classics?The Odysseys within The OdysseyXenophon's AnabasisOvid and Universal ContiguityThe Sky, Man the ElephantNezami's Seven PrincessesTirant lo BlancThe Structure of the Orlando FuriosoBrief Anthology of Octraves from AriostoGerolamo CardanoThe Book of Nature in GalileoCyrano on the MoonRobinson Crusoe, Journal of Mercantile VirtuesCandide, or Concerning Narrative RapidityDenis Diderot, Jacques le FatalisteGiammaria OrtesKnowledge as Dust-cloud in StendhalGuide for New Readers of Stendhal's CharterhouseThe City as Novel in BalzacCharles Dickens, Our Mutual FriendGustave Flaubert, Trois ContesLeo Tolstoy, Two HussarsMark Twain, The Man that Corrupted HadleyburgHenry James, Daisy MillerRobert Louis Stevenson, The Pavilion on the LinksConrad's CaptainsPasternak and the RevolutionThe World is an ArtichokeCarlo Emilio Gadda, The PasticciaccioEugenio Montale, Forse un mattino andandoMontale's CliffHemingway and OurselvesFrancis PongeJorge Luis BorgesThe Philosophy of Raymond Queneau Pavese and Human SacrificePublisher's NoteIndex Show more