The Philosophy of Literary Amateurism (Volume 1) - Hardcover

Lebowitz, Naomi

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082620970X ISBN 13: 9780826209702

Publisher: University of Missouri, 1994

Synopsis

In this coherent, intense study, Naomi Lebowitz defines and explores what she calls "the philosophy of literary amateurism."  With expert readings of the works of major international writers of the Western tradition, Lebowitz passionately argues that all great writing is guided by a moral complexity and richness.

Lebowitz defines literary amateurism as an attitude of anti-professionalism that allows a writer to explore and represent experience with complexity and moral fluidity.  Citing Montaigne as the father of this philosophy, Lebowitz explores the work of such followers of Montaigne as 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 like Flaubert, Taine, Rousseau, and Proust.

In a hyper-professional age of criticism marked by formulaic and political dictition 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. 

About this title

About the Author:

Naomi Lebowitz is Hortense and Tobias Lewin Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, where she teaches English and comparative literature.

Naomi Lebowitz is the author of Ibsen and the Great World of Kierkegaard: A Life of Allegory, among other books, and co-author of Dickens, Manzoni, Zola, and James: The Impossible Romance. She is Hortense and Tobias Lewin Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, where she teaches English and comparative literature.

Review:

"The Philosophy of Literary Amateurism is an important and timely work of literary analysis. Without resorting to strident polemics or humanistic platitudes, [Lebowitz] strikes off the shackles of deconstructionist theory that for a generation have bound literature to a narrow ideology and a puritanical denial of the moral imagination. Lebowitz's study restores to literature, 'in the name of a wise and wide reality,' a rich messiness that escapes--and criticizes--fixed absolutist systems."--Herbert Leibowitz

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Missouri
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 082620970X
• ISBN 13: 9780826209702
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144