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An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis
Category: Culture | Series: Canto Classics
Why do we read literature and how do we judge it? C. S. Lewis's classic An Experiment in Criticism springs from the conviction that literature exists for the joy of the reader and that books should be judged by the kind of reading they invite. He argues that 'good reading', like moral action or religiou ...Show more
Aztecs: An Interpretation by Inga Clendinnen
Category: History | Series: Canto Classics
In 1521, the city of Tenochtitlan, magnificent centre of the Aztec empire, fell to the Spaniards and their Indian allies. Inga Clendinnen's account of the Aztecs recreates the culture of that city in its last unthreatened years. It provides a vividly dramatic analysis of Aztec ceremony as performance ar ...Show more
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action by Elinor Ostrom
Category: Politics | Series: Canto Classics
The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems ...Show more
Language Death by David Crystal
Category: Reference Dictionaries Words | Series: Canto Classics
The rapid endangerment and death of many minority languages across the world is a matter of widespread concern, not only among linguists and anthropologists but among all concerned with issues of cultural identity in an increasingly globalized culture. By some counts, only 600 of the 6,000 or so languag ...Show more
Liberty Before Liberalism by Quentin Skinner
Category: History | Series: Canto Classics
This extended essay by one of the world's leading historians seeks, in its first part, to excavate and to vindicate, the neo-Roman theory of free citizens and free states as it developed in early modern Britain. This analysis leads on to a powerful defence of the nature, purposes and goals of intellectu ...Show more
Magic in the Middle Ages by Richard Kieckhefer
Category: History | Series: Canto Classics
How was magic practised in medieval times? How did it relate to the diverse beliefs and practices that characterised this fascinating period? In Magic in the Middle Ages Richard Kieckhefer surveys the growth and development of magic in medieval times. He examines its relation to religion, science, philo ...Show more
Mortal Questions by Thomas Nagel
Category: Non-Fiction | Series: Canto Classics Ser.
Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions explores some fundamental issues concerning the meaning, nature and value of human life. Questions about our attitudes to death, sexual behaviour, social inequality, war and political power are shown to lead to more obviously philosophical problems about personal identity ...Show more
Something of Myself and Other Autobiographical Writings by Rudyard Kipling
Category: Biography | Series: Canto Classics
Rudyard Kipling has been described as 'one of the few complete originals in English literature'. In his last work, Something of Myself, he reflects on his life and the basis of his art. Yet paradoxically this ostensibly autobiographical work (as an early critic pointed out) actually discloses very littl ...Show more
The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition by C. S. Lewis
Category: Reference | Series: Canto Classics
The Allegory of Love is a landmark study of a powerful and influential medieval conception. C. S. Lewis explores the sentiment called 'courtly love' and the allegorical method within which it developed in literature and thought, from its first flowering in eleventh-century Languedoc through to its trans ...Show more
The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C. S. Lewis
Category: Languages and Reference | Series: Canto Classics Ser.
The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the middle ages and renaissance. It describes the 'image' discarded by later years as 'the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, sci ...Show more
The Invention of Tradition by Eric Hobsbawm
Category: Culture | Series: Canto Classics
Many of the traditions which we think of as very ancient in their origins were not in fact sanctioned by long usage over the centuries, but were invented comparatively recently. This book explores examples of this process of invention - the creation of Welsh and Scottish 'national culture'; the elaborat ...Show more
The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
Category: Popular History | Series: Canto Classics Ser.
Although the importance of the advent of printing for Western civilisation has long been recognised, it was Professor Eisenstein, in her monumental, two-volume work, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, who provided the first full-scale treatment of the subject. This illustrated and abridged editio ...Show more