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OverviewLiterary Representations of Dangerous Reading explores how selected American and European literary texts, from the classic to the contemporary, represent reading as a dangerous endeavor. It investigates how the texts being read or the conditions of reading may produce danger and considers the various qualities of the dangers depicted: literal or metaphorical, real or imagined, minor or mortal. Whereas readers can readily imagine being depressed or bored by a book, or even perhaps corrupted in some moral fashion, readers typically assume that the mere words on a page cannot directly affect their health. Nevertheless, literature can and does stage readings in which readers suffer actual harm from the magical or supernatural qualities of a given text. Such impossibly dangerous reading fascinates, the author argues, by exaggerating the dangers that may inhabit certain real experiences of reading. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Kevin R. WestPublisher: Lexington Books Imprint: Lexington Books Dimensions: Width: 15.80cm , Height: 2.20cm , Length: 23.20cm Weight: 0.503kg ISBN: 9781498563710ISBN 10: 1498563716 Pages: 210 Publication Date: 15 April 2019 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Manufactured on demand We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier. Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Prologue: Deadly Signs Chapter One: Toward a Taxonomy of Dangerous Texts; or, the Hazards of Classification Chapter Two: The Dangers of Romantic Reading Chapter Three: Just Reading or Reading Into? Possibilities of Overreading Chapter Four: The Bible as a Dangerous Text (?) Conclusion: Reading and the Effect of Death Ironic Epilogue: On the Dangers of Not Reading BibliographyReviewsKevin R. West turns the common notion of finding comfort in reading a book on its head. His elegant and accessible examination of dangerous reading spans an impressive range of genres, time periods, and countries. This thought-provoking study is supported by impeccable research and provides an innovative approach to world literature. -- Anthony J. Grubbs, Michigan State University In Literary Depictions of Dangerous Reading: Textual Dangers, Kevin R. West demonstrates that foremost among the pleasures of the text are the dangers it poses-including both dangers to the reader's own inclinations and susceptibilities and to the reigning social order. Drawing from an encyclopedic range of authors (from Homer and Rousseau to Eco and Hemingway) and bounding across a range of genres (from memoir to sci-fi to the Bible), West explores why reading, quite possibly evolution's greatest gift to human beings, has so continuously terrified us. Whether a book wreaks literal magic and mayhem or incites more philosophical fears about how language casts a spell, storytellers and authorities alike demonstrate persistent worries over the threat of narrative. As a worthy successor to Roger Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography, Literary Depictions of Dangerous Reading makes a fine argument for why so many literary authors across the centuries depict texts as the runes by which we divine the power of human perception. -- Kirk Curnutt, Troy University Kevin R. West turns the common notion of finding comfort in reading a book on its head. His elegant and accessible examination of dangerous reading spans an impressive range of genres, time periods, and countries. This thought-provoking study is supported by impeccable research and provides an innovative approach to world literature. -- Anthony J. Grubbs, Michigan State University Author InformationKevin R. West is professor at Stephen F. Austin State University. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |