Passions of the Mind: Selected Writings
by A. S. Byatt
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Description
A collection of essays on the works of authors from the Victorian era to the twentieth century.Tags
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A collection of literary essays and reviews which show Byatt's intellectual acuity and thoughtful approach to literature. However, the highly diverse sources for these essays produce such a wide variety that is is hard to know who this book is aimed at. A good share of it will be of interest only to academic professionals, assuming as they do, a wide range of familiarity with, and instant recall of literature, critical theory, and philosophy. Byatt is one of those people who seems to have read everything and to remember everything that she has read. Some of the chapters on individual authors and books will be of interest to intellectually inclined general readers.
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Author Information
83+ Works 38,315 Members
A.S. Byatt was born on August 24, 1936 in Sheffield, England. She received a B.A. from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1957, did graduate study at Bryn Mawr College from 1957-58, and attended Somerville College, Oxford from 1958-59. She was a staff member in the extra-mural department at the University of London from 1962-71. From 1968-69, she was show more also a part-time lecturer in the liberal studies department of the Central School of Art and Design, London. She was a lecturer at University College from 1972-80 and then senior lecturer from 1981-83. She became a full-time writer in 1983. Her works include The Biographer's Tale, The Virgin in the Garden, Babel Tower, A Whistling Woman, and The Children's Book. She also wrote numerous collections of short stories including Sugar and Other Stories, The Matisse Stories, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, Elementals, and Little Black Book of Stories. Byatt received the English Speaking Union fellowship in 1957-58, the Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983, the Silver Pen Award for Still Life, and the Booker Prize for Possession: A Romance in 1990. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1993
- First words
- Novelists sometimes claim that their fiction is a quite separate thing from their other written work.
- Quotations
- [In Virgin in the Garden] I wanted both to demythologise my novel and to describe the demythologising of the Church in the novel. I am afraid of, and fascinated by, theories of language as a self-referring system of signs, wh... (show all)ich doesn't touch the world. I am afraid of, and resistant to, artistic stances which say we explore only our own subjectivity.
I don't know how much is known about the difference between those who *think* with mental imagery and those who don't. I very much do--I see any projected piece of writing or work as a geometric structure: various colours and... (show all) patterns.
Barbara Pym’s novel An Academic Question was begun in 1970, in a mistaken attempt to write something ‘sharp’ and ‘swinging’ about a provincial university. . . . The result is thin and unappealing.
Everyone in Pym’s books is cut down to size, no less ruthlessly because she is so deceptively mild. It is one way of looking at the world, stoical and ironic. It is part of our contemporary English aimlessness and gloom.
I do believe language has denotative as well as connotative powers.
Classifications
- Genres
- Literature Studies and Criticism, Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 820.9 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English and Old English (Anglo-Saxon) literatures History, description, critical appraisal of works in more than one form
- LCC
- PR6052 .Y2 .P3 — Language and Literature English English Literature 1961-2000
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 366
- Popularity
- 86,067
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.84)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 7
- ASINs
- 1
