A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life“For too long we have been encouraged to see culture as an affair of intellect, and reading as a solitary exercise. But the truth is different: literature and art are pathways of feeling, and our encounter with them is social, inscribing us in a larger community.... Through art we discover that we are not alone.” So writes the esteemed Brown University professor Arnold Weinstein in this brilliant, radical exploration of Western literature. In the tradition of Harold Bloom and Jacques Barzun, Weinstein guides us through great works of art, to reveal how literature constitutes nothing less than a feast for the heart. Our encounter with literature and art can be a unique form of human connection, an entry into the storehouse of feeling. Writing about works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Munch, Proust, O’Neill, Burroughs, DeLillo, Tony Kushner, Toni Morrison, and others, Weinstein explores how writers and artists give us a vision of what human life is really all about. Reading is an affair of the heart as well as of the mind, deepening our sense of the fundamental forces and emotions that govern our lives, including fear, pain, illness, loss, depression, death, and love. Provocative, beautifully written, essential, A Scream Goes Through the House traces the human cry that echoes in literature through the ages, demonstrating how intense feelings are heard and shared. With intellectual insight and emotional acumen, Weinstein reveals how the scream that resounds through the house of literature, history, the body, and the family shows us who we really are and joins us together in a vast and timeless community. |
Contents
A SCREAM GOES THROUGH THE HOUSE | 3 |
LIVING IN THE BODY | 74 |
NARRATIVES OF EXPOSURE | 133 |
PLAGUE AND HUMAN CONNECTION | 211 |
SAYING DEATH | 290 |
Other editions - View all
A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life Arnold Weinstein Limited preview - 2007 |
Common terms and phrases
actually Angels in America Arnold Weinstein artist becomes Bergman Blake's blood body chapter child comes creatures Cronqvist culture dark dead death Defoe depiction depression diagnostic disease doctor dream dying Edvard Munch emotional encounter entire experience exposure eyes fable Fanny and Alexander father feeling fiction figure film final flesh Freud Hamlet hear heart horror hurt Ilych imagine infection Ingmar Bergman Kafka's kind Kushner language Lena Cronqvist literature lives logic look medicine mind mother mourning moves murder mystery narrative NEOPTOLEMUS notions novel Oedipus pain painting Philoctetes plague play plot poem poetry Proust readers Roy Cohn scene scream goes scream that goes seems seen sense Seventh Seal sexual sick social somatic Sonny's Blues Sophocles speak story strange Svensk Filmindustri tell things tion Tony Kushner truth turn vision visionary woman Woyzeck writing