Misplaced Pages

#297702

92-519: Everyman's Library is a series of reprints of classic literature, primarily from the Western canon . It began in 1906. It is currently published in hardback by Random House . It was originally an imprint of J. M. Dent (itself later a division of Weidenfeld & Nicolson and presently an imprint of Orion Books), who continue to publish Everyman Paperbacks . Everyman's Library was conceived in 1905 by London publisher Joseph Malaby Dent , whose goal

184-591: A Tottenham Hotspur supporter. In 2010, Schama was a financial donor to Oona King 's unsuccessful campaign to become Mayor of London . In August 2014, Schama was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue . In November 2017, Schama joined Simon Sebag Montefiore and Howard Jacobson in writing

276-683: A canon ensured a book's preservation as the best way to retain information about a civilization. In contemporary use, the Western canon defines the best of Western culture . In the ancient world, at the Alexandrian Library , scholars coined the Greek term Hoi enkrithentes ["the admitted", "the included"] to identify the writers in the canon. Although the term is often associated with the Western canon, it can be applied to works of literature, music and art, etc. from all traditions, such as

368-432: A shilling apiece. The original U.S. distribution rights were granted to New York City publishers, E. P. Dutton . The name of the publication series was suggested by poet and editor Ernest Rhys , who was named head editor of the series initially, and asked to find a suitable name to encompass Dent's goal. Rhys tried and discarded many ideas before recalling a quotation from the medieval play Everyman in which

460-466: A 2006 article co-authored with Anthony Julius , Schama compared the open letter written by Berger and signed by 92 other leading artists to Nazi Germany , saying: "This is not the first boycott call directed at Jews. On 1 April 1933, only weeks after he came to power, Hitler ordered a boycott of Jewish shops, banks, offices and department stores." In 2006 on the BBC, Schama debated with Vivienne Westwood

552-635: A TV historian. The first result of the deal was a book and TV show entitled Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution , dealing in particular with the proclamation issued during the Revolutionary War by Lord Dunmore offering slaves from rebel plantations freedom in return for service to the crown. In 2006, the BBC broadcast a new TV series, Simon Schama's Power of Art , which, with an accompanying book,

644-615: A canon of literature is the question of authority; who should have the power to determine what works are worth reading? Charles Altieri , of the University of California, Berkeley , states that canons are "an institutional form for exposing people to a range of idealized attitudes." It is according to this notion that work may be removed from the canon over time to reflect the contextual relevance and thoughts of society. American historian Todd M. Compton argues that canons are always communal in nature; that there are limited canons for, say

736-575: A chair at Harvard University as Mellon Professor of History. His next book, The Embarrassment of Riches (1987), again focused on Dutch history. Schama interpreted the ambivalences that informed the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, held in balance between the conflicting imperatives, to live richly and with power, or to live a godly life. The iconographic evidence that Schama draws upon, in 317 illustrations, of emblems and propaganda that defined Dutch character, prefigured his expansion in

828-537: A commonplace writer"). Such classification were initiated with the Greeks' ranking their cultural works, with the word canon (ancient Greek κανών, kanṓn: "measuring rod, standard"). Similarly, early Christian Church Fathers declared as canon the authoritative texts of the New Testament , preserving them given the expense of vellum and papyrus and mechanical book reproduction. Thus, being included in

920-477: A critical attitude, the "canon" served to demythologize the conventional pieties of the American bourgeoisie and provided the student with a perspective from which to critically analyze American culture and institutions. Ironically, the same tradition is now regarded as oppressive. The texts once served an unmasking function; now we are told that it is the texts which must be unmasked. One of the main objections to

1012-587: A further criticism of the party in July 2019, when he joined other leading Jewish figures in saying, in a letter to The Guardian , that the crisis was "a taint of international and historic shame" and that trust in the party was "fractured beyond repair". Schama was critical of British art critic John Berger 's support for the Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel. Writing in The Guardian in

SECTION 10

#1732798594298

1104-455: A general reevaluation of women's historical and academic contributions in response to the belief that women's lives and contributions have been underrepresented as areas of scholarly interest. However, in Britain and America at least women achieved major literary success from the late eighteenth century, and many major nineteenth-century British novelists were women, including Jane Austen ,

1196-524: A golden age. In addition to Bach and Beethoven, the other major figures from this period were George Frideric Handel , Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . The earliest reference to "classical music" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836. Simon Schama Sir Simon Michael Schama CBE FBA FRHistS FRSL ( / ˈ ʃ ɑː m ə / SHAH -mə ; born 13 February 1945)

1288-523: A hostile view was expressed that emphasis on their importance had been an attempt by Eliot and his followers to impose a 'high Anglican and royalist literary history' on 17th-century English poetry. The American critic Yvor Winters suggested in 1939 an alternative canon of Elizabethan poetry , which would exclude the famous representatives of the Petrarchan school of poetry, represented by Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser . Winters claimed that

1380-598: A letter to The Times about their concern over antisemitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn 's leadership, with particular reference to a growth in Anti-Zionism and its purported "antisemitic characteristics". Schama and Sebag Montefiore have both written historical works about Israel, while Jacobson has written regularly about Israel and the UK Jewish community in his newspaper columns. Schama made

1472-657: A life beyond life." In 1910, 500 books had been published under the Everyman trademark, and in 1956, fulfilling Dent's original goal—the thousandth volume, Aristotle 's Metaphysics , having been selected for the honour, was published. By 1975, Dent's vision had been well surpassed, as Everyman's Library consisted of 994 titles published in 1,239 volumes. Each book belonged to one of the following genres: Travel, Science, Fiction, Theology & Philosophy, History, Classical, For Young People, Essays, Oratory, Poetry & Drama, Biography, Reference, and Romance. The appropriate genre

1564-584: A literary style labeled as magic realism , which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo (the town mainly inspired by his birthplace Aracataca ), and most of them explore the theme of solitude . On his death in April 2014, Juan Manuel Santos , the President of Colombia, described him as "the greatest Colombian who ever lived." Mario Vargas Llosa , (b. 1936)

1656-408: A literature survey class, or an English department reading list, but there is no such thing as one absolute canon of literature. Instead, there are many conflicting canons. He regards Bloom's "Western Canon" as a personal canon only. The process of defining the boundaries of the canon is endless. The philosopher John Searle has said, "In my experience there never was, in fact, a fixed 'canon'; there

1748-529: A lived event and its subsequent narration." Not all readers absorbed the nuance of the title: it received a very mixed critical and academic reception. Traditional historians in particular denounced Schama's integration of fact and conjecture to produce a seamless narrative, but later assessments took a more relaxed view of the experiment. It was an approach soon taken up by such historical writers as Peter Ackroyd , David Taylor , and Richard Holmes . Schama's next book, Landscape and Memory (1995), focused on

1840-501: A narrow interpretation of the West, dominated by British and American culture, at least under contemporary circumstances, prompting demands for a more diversified canon amongst the hemisphere. A classic is a book, or any other work of art, accepted as being exemplary or noteworthy. In the second-century Roman miscellany Attic Nights , Aulus Gellius refers to writers as "classicus... scriptor, non proletarius" ("A distinguished, not

1932-609: A profound influence on medieval scholarship. Their influence extended from Late Antiquity into the Renaissance , and his views were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics . In metaphysics, Aristotelianism profoundly influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophical and theological thought during the Middle Ages and continues to influence Christian theology , especially

SECTION 20

#1732798594298

2024-486: A remake of a foundry-face Dent had used before. Series 59 came out in 1912, and was made in the same style of the Golden Type, but with sharper slab serifs and cleaner lines. Now Dent was able to produce his texts with machines. This old style was later replaced in 1935 by Eric Ravilious 's designs. Everyman's Library books were pocket-sized hardcovers that sold initially for what was then the remarkably low price of

2116-615: A student's education, such as Plato's Republic , or Dante's Divine Comedy . Such programs often focus exclusively on Western culture. Their employment of primary texts dictates an interdisciplinary approach, as most of the Great Books do not fall neatly under the prerogative of a single contemporary academic discipline. Great Books programs often include designated discussion groups as well as lectures, and have small class sizes. In general students in such programs receive an abnormally high degree of attention from their professors, as part of

2208-579: Is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature . One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his books have sold over thirteen million copies in sixty-three languages, making him the country's best-selling writer. Pamuk is the author of novels including The White Castle , The Black Book , The New Life , My Name Is Red , Snow , The Museum of Innocence , and A Strangeness in My Mind . He

2300-547: Is a Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, essayist, college professor, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature . Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom . Upon announcing

2392-790: Is a list of books considered to be "essential", and it can be published as a collection (such as Great Books of the Western World , Modern Library , Everyman's Library or Penguin Classics ), presented as a list with an academic's imprimatur (such as Harold Bloom 's ), or be the official reading list of a university. In The Western Canon Bloom lists "the major Western writers" as Dante Alighieri , Geoffrey Chaucer , Miguel de Cervantes , Michel de Montaigne , William Shakespeare , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , William Wordsworth , Charles Dickens , Leo Tolstoy , James Joyce and Marcel Proust . A university or college Great Books Program

2484-525: Is a program inspired by the Great Books movement begun in the United States in the 1920s by John Erskine of Columbia University , which proposed to improve the higher education system by returning it to the western liberal arts tradition of broad cross-disciplinary learning. These academics and educators included Robert Hutchins , Mortimer Adler , Stringfellow Barr , Scott Buchanan , Jacques Barzun , and Alexander Meiklejohn . The view among them

2576-636: Is an English historian and television presenter. He specialises in art history , Dutch history , Jewish history , and French history . He is a Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University . Schama first came to public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled Citizens , published in 1989. He is also known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC television documentary series A History of Britain (2000—2002), as well as other documentary series such as The American Future: A History (2008) and The Story of

2668-702: Is the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University , where he teaches writing and comparative literature . Born in Istanbul , Pamuk is the first Turkish Nobel laureate. He is also the recipient of numerous other literary awards. My Name Is Red won the 2002 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger , 2002 Premio Grinzane Cavour , and 2003 International Dublin Literary Award . Octavio Paz Lozano (1914–1998)

2760-653: The Boston Red Sox . In 2010, Schama presented a series of ten talks for the BBC Radio 4 series A Point of View. In 2011, the BBC commissioned Simon Schama to write and present a five-part series called A History of the Jews for BBC Two , for transmission in 2012, The title became The Story of the Jews and broadcast was delayed until September 2013. Writing in The Observer , Andrew Anthony called

2852-634: The Brontë family , Elizabeth Gaskell , and George Eliot . There were also three major female poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning , Christina Rossetti and Emily Dickinson . In the twentieth century there were also many major female writers, including Katherine Mansfield , Dorothy Richardson , Virginia Woolf , Eudora Welty , and Marianne Moore . Notable female writers in France include Colette , Simone de Beauvoir , Marguerite Yourcenar , Nathalie Sarraute , Marguerite Duras and Françoise Sagan . Much of

Everyman's Library - Misplaced Pages Continue

2944-578: The Chinese classics . With regard to books, what makes a book "classic" has concerned various authors, from Mark Twain to Italo Calvino , and questions such as "Why Read the Classics?", and "What Is a Classic?" have been considered by others, including T. S. Eliot , Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve , Michael Dirda , and Ezra Pound . The terms "classic book" and Western canon are closely related concepts, but are not necessarily synonymous. A "canon"

3036-511: The Middle East , and South America. Writers from Africa, Turkey, China, Egypt, Peru, and Colombia, Japan, etc., have received Nobel prizes since the late 1960s. Writers from Asia and Africa have also been nominated for, and also won, the Booker prize in recent years. Susan Hardy Aitken argues that the Western canon has maintained itself by excluding and marginalising women, whilst idealising

3128-831: The Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Roman Catholic Church . Aristotle was well known among medieval Muslim intellectuals and revered as "The First Teacher" ( Arabic : المعلم الأول ). His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics . The vast body of Christian philosophy is typically represented on reading lists mainly by Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas . The academic canon of early modern philosophy generally includes Descartes , Spinoza , Leibniz , Locke , Berkeley , Hume , and Kant . Major philosophers of

3220-421: The Renaissance include Niccolò Machiavelli , Michel de Montaigne , Pico della Mirandola , Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno , Marsilio Ficino and Gemistos Plethon . The seventeenth century was important for philosophy, and the major figures were Francis Bacon , Thomas Hobbes , René Descartes , Blaise Pascal , Baruch Spinoza , John Locke and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz . Major philosophers of

3312-772: The Wolfson History Prize . The book was originally intended as a study of the French Revolution, but as published in 1977, it focused on the effect of the Patriottentijd revolution of the 1780s in the Netherlands, and its aftermath . His second book, Two Rothschilds and the Land of Israel (1978), is a study of the Zionist aims of Edmond and James Rothschild . In 1980, Schama took up

3404-483: The humanities ). Knox used the intentionally "provocative" title "The Oldest Dead White European Males" as the title of his lecture and his subsequent book of the same name, in both of which Knox defended the continuing relevance of classical culture to modern society. Defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of primarily political interests, and that such criticisms are misguided and/or disingenuous. As John Searle , Professor of Philosophy at

3496-468: The wider African diaspora of writers in Britain, France, Latin America, and Africa. This correlated largely with the shift in social and political views during the civil rights movement in the United States. The first global recognition came in 1950 when Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Literature. Chinua Achebe 's novel Things Fall Apart helped draw attention to African literature . Nigerian Wole Soyinka

3588-627: The 1990s as a commentator on art and visual culture. Citizens (1989), written at speed to a publisher's commission, saw the publication of his long-awaited study of the French Revolution , and won the 1990 NCR Book Award . Its view that the violence of the Terror was inherent from the start of the Revolution, however, has received serious negative criticism. Schama appeared as an on-screen expert in Michael Wood 's 1989 PBS series Art of

3680-485: The 1990s the concept of the Western canon was vehemently condemned, just as earlier Modern Library lists had been criticized as "too American," Modern Library responded by preparing new lists of "100 Best Novels" and "100 Best Nonfiction" compiled by famous writers, and later compiled lists nominated by book purchasers and readers. Some intellectuals have championed a "high conservative modernism" that insists that universal truths exist, and have opposed approaches that deny

3772-478: The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy said it had been given to Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". Many philosophers today agree that Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture since its inception. Alfred North Whitehead once noted: "The safest general characterization of

Everyman's Library - Misplaced Pages Continue

3864-602: The Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller . He is best known to Western readers for his 1987 novel Red Sorghum Clan , of which the Red Sorghum and Sorghum Wine volumes were later adapted for the film Red Sorghum . In 2012, Mo was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work as a writer "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". Orhan Pamuk (b. 1952)

3956-618: The European intellectual filter. This view of African-American literature as a tool in the struggle for African-American political and cultural liberation has been stated for decades, most famously by W. E. B. Du Bois . Since the 1960s the Western literary canon has been expanded to include writers from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This is reflected in the Nobel Prizes awarded in literature. Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972)

4048-693: The European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato ." Clear, unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers to Early Islamic philosophy , the European Renaissance , and the Age of Enlightenment . Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens . He is widely considered

4140-555: The Jews (2013). Schama was knighted in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours List. Schama was born on 13 February 1945 in Marylebone , London. His mother, Gertie (née Steinberg), was from an Ashkenazi Lithuanian Jewish family (from Kaunas , present-day Lithuania ), and his father, Arthur Schama, was of Sephardi Jewish background (from Smyrna, present-day İzmir in Turkey), later moving through Moldova and Romania. In

4232-659: The Native or Plain Style anti-Petrarchan movement had been undervalued and argued that George Gascoigne (1525–1577) "deserves to be ranked […] among the six or seven greatest lyric poets of the century, and perhaps higher". Towards the end of the 20th century the established canon was increasingly disputed. In the twentieth century there was a general reassessment of the literary canon , including women's writing , post-colonial literatures , gay and lesbian literature , writing by racialized minorities, working people's writing, and

4324-718: The Souls of Today's Students (1987), argues that moral degradation results from ignorance of the great classics that shaped Western culture. Bloom further comments: "But one thing is certain: wherever the Great Books make up a central part of the curriculum, the students are excited and satisfied." His book was widely cited by some intellectuals for its argument that the classics contained universal truths and timeless values which were being ignored by cultural relativists . Classicist Bernard Knox made direct reference to this topic when he delivered his 1992 Jefferson Lecture (the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in

4416-596: The United States, a move praised by many notable authors. Control of Everyman's Library passed to US-based Random House in 2002, who continue to publish it under the Knopf Publishers imprint there and (albeit without changes) as Random House UK elsewhere. J. M. Dent & Sons was acquired by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1988, itself acquired by the Orion Publishing Group in 1991, now both part of Hachette Livre (UK). Orion continues to publish

4508-593: The University of California, Berkeley, has written: There is a certain irony in this [i.e., politicized objections to the canon] in that earlier student generations, my own for example, found the critical tradition that runs from Socrates through the Federalist Papers , through the writings of Mill and Marx , down to the twentieth century, to be liberating from the stuffy conventions of traditional American politics and pieties. Precisely by inculcating

4600-431: The Western World ("Realms of Light: The Baroque") as a presenting art historian, commenting on paintings by Diego Velázquez , Rembrandt , and Johannes Vermeer . In 1991, he published Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations) , a relatively slender work of unusual structure and point-of-view in that it looked at two widely reported deaths a hundred years apart, that of British Army General James Wolfe in 1759 – and

4692-700: The best in the Spanish language , he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature . García Márquez started as a journalist, and wrote many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985). His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing

SECTION 50

#1732798594298

4784-418: The book was a commercial success and won numerous prizes. Plaudits came from the art world rather than from traditional academia. Schama became art critic for The New Yorker in 1995. He held the position for three years, dovetailing his regular column with professorial duties at Columbia University ; a selection of his essays on art for the magazine, chosen by Schama himself, was published in 2005 under

4876-480: The central figures of the British renaissance canon remain, Edmund Spenser , Sir Philip Sidney , Christopher Marlowe , William Shakespeare , Ben Jonson , and John Donne . Spenser , Donne , and Jonson were major influences on 17th-century poetry. However, poet John Dryden condemned aspects of the metaphysical poets in his criticism. In the 18th century Metaphysical poetry fell into further disrepute, while

4968-438: The character of Knowledge says to Everyman: This quotation appears on the title page of all volumes of Everyman's Library and Everyman Paperbacks. J. M. Dent and Company commenced the series in 1906 with an edition of James Boswell 's Life of Johnson , published with a quotation on the title page from the works of John Milton : "A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured upon purpose to

5060-455: The claim that because blacks had no written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture." African-American writers were also attempting to subvert the literary and power traditions of the United States. Some scholars assert that writing has traditionally been seen as "something defined by the dominant culture as a white male activity." This means that, in American society, literary acceptance has traditionally been intimately tied in with

5152-424: The core of canon music and remains mostly unchanged to our days. It integrates a huge body of works starting from the 17th century and are reproduced on an ensemble of all acoustic musical instruments that were common in that century's Europe. The term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to distinctly canonize the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Ludwig van Beethoven as

5244-568: The course of the 1920s, Eliot did much to establish the importance of the metaphysical school, both through his critical writing and by applying their method in his own work. However, by 1961 A. Alvarez was commenting that "it may perhaps be a little late in the day to be writing about the Metaphysicals. The great vogue for Donne passed with the passing of the Anglo-American experimental movement in modern poetry." Two decades later,

5336-419: The cultural productions of historically marginalized groups. This reassessment has resulted in a whole scale expansion of what is considered "literature", and genres hitherto not regarded as "literary", such as children's writing, journals, letters, travel writing, and many others are now the subjects of scholarly interest. The Western literary canon has also expanded to include the literature of Asia, Africa,

5428-525: The curriculum at the University of Chicago . University president Robert Maynard Hutchins and his collaborator Mortimer Adler developed a program that offered reading lists, books, and organizational strategies for reading clubs to the general public. An earlier attempt had been made in 1909 by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot , with the Harvard Classics , a 51-volume anthology of classic works from world literature. Eliot's view

5520-451: The early period of feminist literary scholarship was given over to the rediscovery and reclamation of texts written by women. Virago Press began to publish its large list of 19th and early 20th-century novels in 1975 and became one of the first commercial presses to join in the project of reclamation. In the twentieth century, the Western literary canon started to include African writers not only from African-American writers , but also from

5612-907: The eighteenth century include George Berkeley , Montesquieu , Voltaire , David Hume , Giambattista Vico , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Denis Diderot , Immanuel Kant , Edmund Burke and Jeremy Bentham . Important nineteenth century philosophers include Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), Giuseppe Mazzini , Arthur Schopenhauer , Auguste Comte , Søren Kierkegaard , Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels and Friedrich Nietzsche . Major twentieth century figures include Henri Bergson , Edmund Husserl , Bertrand Russell , Martin Heidegger , Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jean-Paul Sartre , Simone de Beauvoir , and Simone Weil , Michel Foucault , Pierre Bourdieu , Jacques Derrida and Jürgen Habermas . A porous distinction between analytic and continental approaches emerged during this period. Classical music forms

SECTION 60

#1732798594298

5704-637: The existence of universal truths. Yale University Professor of Humanities and famous literary critic Harold Bloom also argued strongly in favor of the canon, in his 1994 book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages , and in general the canon remains as a represented idea in many institutions. Allan Bloom (no relation), in his highly influential The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished

5796-456: The famous 1770 painting depicting the event by Benjamin West – and that of George Parkman , murdered uncle of the better known 19th-century American historian Francis Parkman . Schama mooted some possible (invented) connections between the two cases, exploring the historian's inability "ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing the documentation", and speculatively bridging "the teasing gap separating

5888-679: The first contemporary writers of Arabic literature , along with Tawfiq el-Hakim , to explore themes of existentialism . He published 34 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts, and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films. Kenzaburō Ōe (1935–2023) was a Japanese writer and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature . His novels, short stories, and essays, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory , deal with political, social, and philosophical issues, including nuclear weapons , nuclear power , social non-conformism , and existentialism . Ōe

5980-730: The interest in Elizabethan poetry was rekindled through the scholarship of Thomas Warton and others. However, the canon of Renaissance poetry was formed in the Victorian period with anthologies like Palgrave's Golden Treasury . In the twentieth century T. S. Eliot and Yvor Winters were two literary critics who were especially concerned with revising the canon of renaissance English literature. Eliot, for example, championed poet Sir John Davies in an article in The Times Literary Supplement in 1926. During

6072-438: The mid-1940s, the family moved to Southend-on-Sea in Essex before moving back to London. In 1956, Schama won a scholarship to the private Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Cricklewood (from 1961 Elstree , Hertfordshire). He then studied history at Christ's College, Cambridge , where he was taught by John H. Plumb . He graduated from the University of Cambridge with a Starred First in 1966. From 1966 to 1976, Schama

6164-437: The morality of Israel's actions in the Israel-Lebanon War . He described Israel's bombing of Lebanese city centres as unhelpful to Israel's attempt to "get rid of" Hezbollah . He said: "Of course the spectacle and suffering makes us grieve. Who wouldn't grieve? But it's not enough to do that. We've got to understand. You've even got to understand Israel's point of view." Schama was a supporter of President Barack Obama and

6256-445: The most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, especially the Western tradition . Aristotle was an ancient Greek philosopher . His writings cover many subjects – including physics , biology , zoology , metaphysics , logic , ethics , aesthetics , rhetoric , linguistics , politics and government—and constitute the first comprehensive system of Western philosophy . Aristotle's views on physical science had

6348-438: The overall aim of fostering a community of learning. Over 100 institutions of higher learning, mostly in the United States, offer some version of a Great Books Program as an option for students. For much of the 20th century, the Modern Library provided a larger convenient list of the Western canon. The list numbered more than 300 items by the 1950s, by authors from Aristotle to Albert Camus, and has continued to grow. When in

6440-402: The pre- Anglo-Saxon history of Insular Celtic civilisation. Three series were made, totalling 15 episodes, covering the complete span of British history up until 1965; it went on to become one of the BBC's best-selling documentary series on DVD. Schama also wrote a trilogy of tie-in books for the show, which took the story up to the year 2000; there is some debate as to whether the books are

6532-426: The range in 1913. Individual volumes could be purchased separately, enabling the set to be budgeted over time. The fifth edition was published in 1967, by which time it consisted of 12 volumes, containing 7763 pages. The page size was 9 by 5 inches (23 by 13 cm), but as the printing was 8 point, a large amount of information was contained in each volume. As a volume only weighed about 1.25 kg (2.8 lb), it

6624-436: The relationship between physical environment and folk memory , separating the components of landscape as wood, water and rock, enmeshed in the cultural consciousness of collective "memory" embodied in myths, which Schama finds to be expressed outwardly in ceremony and text. More personal and idiosyncratic than Dead Certainties , this book was more traditionally structured and better-defined in its approach. Despite mixed reviews,

6716-465: The series "an astonishing achievement, a TV landmark." In 2018, Simon Schama wrote and presented five of the nine episodes of Civilisations , a reboot of the 1969 series by Kenneth Clark . Schama is Jewish. He is married to Virginia Papaioannou, a geneticist from California; they have two children, Chloe and Gabriel. As of 2014, Schama resides in Briarcliff Manor, New York . He is

6808-532: The tie-in product for the TV series, or the other way around. The series also had some popularity in the United States when it was first shown on the History Channel . In 2001, Schama received a CBE . In 2003, he signed a new contract with the BBC and HarperCollins to produce three new books and two accompanying TV series. Worth £3 million (around US$ 5.3m), it represents the biggest advance deal ever for

6900-510: The title A History of Britain . Schama wrote and presented the episodes himself, in a friendly and often jocular style with his highly characteristic delivery, and was rewarded with excellent reviews and unexpectedly high ratings. There has been, however, some irritation and criticism expressed by a group of historians about Schama's condensed recounting of the British Isles ' history on this occasion, particularly by those specialising in

6992-495: The title Hang Ups . During this time, Schama also produced a lavishly illustrated Rembrandt's Eyes , another critical and commercial success. Despite the book's title, it contrasts the biographies of Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens . Schama returned to the UK in 2000, having been commissioned by the BBC to produce a series of television documentary programmes on British history as part of their Millennium celebrations, under

7084-534: The unrelated Everyman Paperbacks under the J. M. Dent imprint in the UK and via Charles E. Tuttle Co. in the US. The current membership of the Honorary Editorial Committee includes Henry Louis Gates Jr. , Cynthia Ozick and Simon Schama . Former committee members include Harold Bloom and Toni Morrison . A notable addition to the library was a multi-volume encyclopedia, which was added to

7176-473: The very power dynamics which perpetrated such evils as racial discrimination. By borrowing from and incorporating the non-written oral traditions and folk life of the African diaspora , African-American literature broke "the mystique of connection between literary authority and patriarchal power." In producing their own literature, African Americans were able to establish their own literary traditions devoid of

7268-421: The works of European men. Where women's work is introduced it can be considered inappropriately rather than recognising the importance of their work; a work's greatness is judged against socially situated factors which exclude women, whilst being portrayed as an intellectual approach. The feminist movement produced both feminist fiction and non-fiction and created new interest in women's writing. It also prompted

7360-401: Was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read. Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature . He is regarded as one of

7452-579: Was a fellow and director of studies in history at Christ's College, Cambridge . He then moved to Oxford University , where he was elected a fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford in 1976, specialising in the French Revolution . He also worked at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. At this time, Schama wrote his first book, Patriots and Liberators , which won

7544-402: Was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize , the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature , and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature . Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) was a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century and one of

7636-414: Was also shown on PBS in the United States. In October 2008, on the eve of the presidential election won by Barack Obama , the BBC broadcast a four-part television series called The American Future: A History presented and written by Schama. In March 2009, Schama presented a BBC Radio 4 show entitled Baseball and Me , both exploring the history of the game and describing his own personal support of

7728-474: Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world , where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today". Guan Moye (b. 1955), better known by the pen name "Mo Yan", is a Chinese novelist and short story writer. Donald Morrison of the U.S. news magazine TIME referred to him as "one of the most famous, oft-banned and widely pirated of all Chinese writers ", and Jim Leach called him

7820-510: Was considered a better size for use by children. Western canon Recent discussions upon the matter emphasise cultural diversity within the canon. The canons of music and visual arts have been broadened to encompass often overlooked periods, whilst recent media like cinema grapple with a precarious position. Criticism arises, with some viewing changes as prioritising activism over aesthetic values, often associated with critical theory, as well as postmodernism . Another critique highlights

7912-521: Was presented and written by Schama. It marks a return to art history for him, treating eight artists through eight key works: Caravaggio 's David with the Head of Goliath , Bernini 's Ecstasy of St Theresa , Rembrandt 's Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis , Jacques-Louis David 's The Death of Marat , J. M. W. Turner 's The Slave Ship , Vincent van Gogh 's Wheat Field with Crows , Picasso 's Guernica and Mark Rothko 's Seagram murals . It

8004-543: Was printed inside and used to organise the periodically released lists of the series. After ceasing publication of new titles in the 1970s, the hardback rights to Everyman's Library were sold to the newly formed David Campbell Publishers in 1991 and relaunched with the support of the Random House Group in the United Kingdom and through Alfred A. Knopf (which had been acquired by Random House in 1960) in

8096-548: Was rather a certain set of tentative judgments about what had importance and quality. Such judgments are always subject to revision, and in fact they were constantly being revised." One of the notable attempts at compiling an authoritative canon for literature in the English-speaking world was the Great Books of the Western World program. This program, developed in the middle third of the 20th century, grew out of

8188-428: Was that the emphasis on narrow specialization in American colleges had harmed the quality of higher education by failing to expose students to the important products of Western civilization and thought. The essential component of such programs is a high degree of engagement with primary texts, called the Great Books. The curricula of Great Books programs often follow a canon of texts considered more or less essential to

8280-427: Was the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1986, and American Toni Morrison was the first African-American woman to win, in 1993. Some early Afro-American writers were inspired to defy ubiquitous racial prejudice by proving themselves equal to European American authors. As Henry Louis Gates Jr., has said, "it is fair to describe the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute

8372-466: Was the same as that of Scottish philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle : "The true University of these days is a Collection of Books". ("The Hero as Man of Letters", 1840) The canon of Renaissance English poetry of the 16th and early 17th century has always been in some form of flux and towards the end of the 20th century the established canon was criticised, especially by those who wished to expand it to include, for example, more women writers. However,

8464-454: Was to create a 1,000-volume library of world literature that was affordable for, and that appealed to, every kind of person, from students to the working classes to the cultural elite. Dent followed the design principles and to a certain extent the style established by William Morris in his Kelmscott Press. For this Dent asked the Monotype corporation to design a new typeface: Veronese was

#297702