If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.
M. H. AbramsRead
We believed that to understand literature, you had to understand its place in history and culture.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Understanding literature requires a grasp of its historical and cultural context.
M. H. Abrams emphasizes the importance of situating literature within its historical and cultural frameworks to fully appreciate its meaning and significance. This perspective highlights how literature is not created in a vacuum but rather reflects and responds to the society and era in which it was produced, enriching our understanding of both the text and the world.
Themes
LiteratureHistoryCultureUnderstandingContext
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture on literary analysis, I quoted M. H. Abrams to illustrate the importance of historical context.
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What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation, and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy!
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There is no substitute for knowledge.
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Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.
William FaulknerRead
Years should not be devoted to the acquisition of dead languages or to the study of history which, for the most part, is a detailed account of things that never occurred. It is useless to fill the individual with dates of great battles, with the births and deaths of kings. They should be taught the philosophy of history, the growth of nations, of philosophies, theories, and, above all, of the sciences.
Robert Green IngersollRead
Our future lies with today's kids and tomorrow's space exploration.
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Universities are not here to be mediums for the coercion of other people, they're here to be mediums for the free exchange of ideas.
A. Bartlett GiamattiRead