Hospitality and Treachery in Western Literature
Regular price
€68.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=James A. W. Heffernan
Author_James A. W. Heffernan
Category=DSB
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Product details
- ISBN 9780300195583
- Weight: 748g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 27 May 2014
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
In works of Western literature ranging from Homer’s Odyssey to Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? the giving and taking of hospitality is sometimes pleasurable, but more often perilous. Heffernan traces this leitmotiv through the history of our greatest writings, including Christ’s Last Supper, Macbeth’s murder of his royal guest, and Camus’s short story on French colonialism in Arab Algeria. By means of such examples and many more, this book considers what literary hosts, hostesses, and guests do to as well as for each other. In doing so, it shows how often treachery rends the fabric of trust that hospitality weaves.
James A. W. Heffernan is Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College and founding editor of Review 19, an online review of books on nineteenth-century English and American literature.
