In Defense of Reading

Written by influential scholar-critic and award-winning Daniel R.Schwarz, In Defense of Reading: Teaching Literature in theTwenty-First Century is a passionate and joyful defense of thepleasures of reading. This stimulating book provides valuableinsights for teachers and students on why we read and how we readwhen we embark on "the odyssey of reading." * Provides valuable insights into why and how we read * Addresses issues and problems in the contemporary universityand offers insights into the future * Explores the life of the mind, the rewards and joys ofcommitted teaching, and the relationship between teaching andscholarship in the contemporary university * Draws on the author's forty years of teaching experience * Following his long term commitment to close reading andhistoricism, Schwarz shows how the best literary criticism mustboth respect text and context * Contains insightful and important readings of a broad range oftexts, including those by Joyce, Woolf, Conrad, Forster, Gordimer,and Spiegelman's Maus