Delight of Great Books

9781417902361

1417902361

1928. From the dust jacket: When in his preface John Erskine warns us not to fear the word classics, we know we are listening to the man who has himself most decisively outfaced that bugaboo. With that dreary ghost cleared from the field we can, under his urbane guidance, draw near enough to these great books to catch their warmth and friendliness, their importance for us. In them are truths of life to which each of us brings his own interpretation and from which he learns wisdom greater than he brought. We find, perhaps with surprise and certainly with relief, that we do not need the scholarship of facts and dates to make contact with the scholarship of life which we meet in these great islands of spirit, for life, though its interpretation may change, is universal. The humanist who proved that Helen and Galahad and Lilith are living today does not preach; does not teach. He simply makes it extremely difficult not to learn and impossible not to enjoy. Contents: On Reading Great Books; Canterbury Tales; Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur; The Faerie Queen; Romeo and Juliet; The Temptest; Paradise Lost; Walter Scott; Don Juan; Moby Dick; The Ordeal of Richard Feverel; Huckelberry Finn; Candida; and Modern Irish Poetry. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.