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"Definitions" is a book of critical essays by Henry Seidel Canby, a critic, editor, and Yale University professor. The book presents critical essays on the developments in American literature in the second half of the 19th century.
"Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism" is a set of informative articles written by means of Henry Seidel Canby. Canby's paintings, published inside the early twentieth century, dives into literary complaint with a modern attitude. The portions within the anthology present Canby's severe feedback on numerous literary and cultural issues of the day. In "Definitions," Canby makes use of his sharp mind to study and describe most important components of literature, way of life, and society. The articles cowl a wide range of topics, from the complexities of language and style to broader analyses of cultural norms and values. Canby's prose is clear and deep, making complicated topics understandable to a broad audience. As a literary critic, Canby examines the works of his contemporaries, supplying nuanced viewpoints on the converting nature of literature and its feature in reflecting and growing society. "Definitions" demonstrates Canby's highbrow prowess and ability to traverse the problems of current culture using literary evaluation.
This collection of essays on definitions, from Plato and Aristotle to modern times, assembles interesting, sometimes less widely known and controversial texts. They examine the subject from the point of view of philosophy which is essential for a theory of terminology seeking to establish the relationship between concepts and terms. These essays deal mainly with theoretical issues but they also consider the practice of defining and therefore serve as background to all manner of studies in terminology. In addition they form a useful complement to the better known discussions of definitions in lexicography.
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Excerpt from Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism The unity of this book is to be sought in the point of view of the writer rather than in a sequence of chapters developing a single theme and arriving at categorical conclusions. Literature in a civilization like ours, which is trying to be both sophisticated and democratic at the same moment of time, has so many sources and so many manifestations, is so much involved with our social background, and is so much a question of life as well as of art, that many doors have to be opened before one begins to approach an understanding. The method of informal definition which I have followed in all these essays is an attempt to open doors through which both writer and reader may enter into a better comprehension of what novelists, poets, and critics have done or are trying to accomplish. More than an entrance upon many a vexed controversy and hidden meaning I cannot expect to have achieved in this book; but where the door would not swing wide I have at least tried to put one foot in the crack. The sympathetic reader may find his own way further; or may be stirred by my endeavor to a deeper appreciation, interest, and insight. That is my hope. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Book Excerpt: ...t in a novel or a play where, quite contrary to his observed experience, ordinary people like himself act nobly, with a success that is all the more agreeable for being unexpected. His wife, a woman with strange stirrings about her heart, with motions toward beauty, and desires for a significant life and rich, satisfying experience, exists in day-long pettiness, gossips, frivols, scolds, with money enough to do what she pleases, and nothing vital to do. She also relieves her pent-up idealism in plays or books--in high-wrought, "strong" novels, not in adventures in society such as the kitchen admires, but in stories with violent moral and emotional crises, whose characters, no matter how unlifelike, have "strong" thoughts, and make vital decisions; succeed or fail significantly. Her brother, the head of a wholesale dry-goods firm, listens to the stories the drummers bring home of night life on the road, laughs, says to himself regretfully that the world has to be like that; and then, in logical reaction, deman...
Professor Canby is a writer from whom one expects much, his essays being generally of such a character as to provoke the paradoxical criticism that they are so good that they ought to be better. His humor is so incisive that one would have him always humorous: his originality is so suggestive that one sometimes wishes he were not quite so sensible: his judgment is so sound that one wishes he would enlarge the scope and the thoroughness of his considerations.The essays in this book, like much of this writer's output, are, however, roughly classifiable into two tolerably distinct groups--the academic and the vital. By academic one does not of course mean stiff, labored or wholly futile. Just what one does mean is perhaps best indicated by a sample. In the last paragraph of his essay on To-day in American Literature, Professor Canby writes: "In literature we are still pioneers. I think it may be reserved for us to discover a literature for the new democracy of English-speaking peoples that is coming--a literature for the common people who do not wish to stay common. Like Lincoln's, it will not be vulgar; like Whitman's, never tawdry; like Mark Twain's, not empty of penetrating thought; like Shakespeare's it will be popular. If this should happen, as I believe it may, it would be a just return upon our share of a great inheritance."Now this is extremely well said. It is quite remarkable, indeed, that anything so nearly inspiring should emerge as the conclusion of an essay upon such a subject as "To-day in American Literature."