What do you think?
Rate this book
English and American Literatures
Rare Book
- GenresNonfiction
216 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2008
11 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
Michael Meyer
109 books10 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Michael Meyer has taught writing and literature courses for more than thirty years—since 1981 at the University of Connecticut and before that at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the College of William and Mary. In addition to being an experienced teacher, Meyer is a highly regarded literary scholar. His scholarly articles have appeared in distinguished journals such as American Literature, Studies in the American Renaissance, and Virginia Quarterly Review. An internationally recognized authority on Henry David Thoreau, Meyer is a former president of the Thoreau Society and coauthor (with Walter Harding) of The New Thoreau Handbook, a standard reference source. The American Studies Association awarded his first book, Several More Lives to Live: Thoreau’s Political Reputation in America, the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize. . He is also the editor of Frederick Douglass: The Narrative and Selected Writings. He has lectured on a variety of American literary topics from Cambridge University to Peking University. His books for Bedford/St. Martin's include The Bedford Introduction to Literature; The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature; Literature to Go; Poetry: An Introduction; and Thinking and Writing about Literature.
Michael Meyer has taught writing and literature courses for more than thirty years—since 1981 at the University of Connecticut and before that at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the College of William and Mary. In addition to being an experienced teacher, Meyer is a highly regarded literary scholar. His scholarly articles have appeared in distinguished journals such as American Literature, Studies in the American Renaissance, and Virginia Quarterly Review. An internationally recognized authority on Henry David Thoreau, Meyer is a former president of the Thoreau Society and coauthor (with Walter Harding) of The New Thoreau Handbook, a standard reference source. The American Studies Association awarded his first book, Several More Lives to Live: Thoreau’s Political Reputation in America, the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize. . He is also the editor of Frederick Douglass: The Narrative and Selected Writings. He has lectured on a variety of American literary topics from Cambridge University to Peking University. His books for Bedford/St. Martin's include The Bedford Introduction to Literature; The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature; Literature to Go; Poetry: An Introduction; and Thinking and Writing about Literature.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 16, 2015
DNF!
It does give you a broad overview over most of the topics. What is annoying though, is that most sentences are riddled with German vocabulary. If you're studying English and American Literature, you should be able to understand basic word from the English language or otherwise be able to get yourself a dictionary and look the word up. This German input is, in my opinion, very unnecessary and not really helpful. Also there are a lot of books that sum up the English and American Literature a lot better because they are far more detailed and less opinionated, because since it's an academic book, it should focus more on the topic itself and not what the authors deems "important". The literary epoch, for example, are practically non-existent because apparently the lack of feminism and racism (in his opinion) have created more sub-genres and now the epochs are too confusing. Ergo, that is the only summary you'll get from him. Otherwise, this book is a very short, very brief and not very detailed summary of pretty much everything that might be important in your literary studies of this subject.
It does give you a broad overview over most of the topics. What is annoying though, is that most sentences are riddled with German vocabulary. If you're studying English and American Literature, you should be able to understand basic word from the English language or otherwise be able to get yourself a dictionary and look the word up. This German input is, in my opinion, very unnecessary and not really helpful. Also there are a lot of books that sum up the English and American Literature a lot better because they are far more detailed and less opinionated, because since it's an academic book, it should focus more on the topic itself and not what the authors deems "important". The literary epoch, for example, are practically non-existent because apparently the lack of feminism and racism (in his opinion) have created more sub-genres and now the epochs are too confusing. Ergo, that is the only summary you'll get from him. Otherwise, this book is a very short, very brief and not very detailed summary of pretty much everything that might be important in your literary studies of this subject.
September 15, 2017
This book helped me a lot in the improvement of my knowledge about literature. It has detailed definitions and examples of literary phenomenons and is suited for people who want to start getting into the analysis of literature and text in general.
April 1, 2021
Easy to understand and gives a basic overview.
Read
February 20, 2024Stopped reading this book halfway through due to not needing it anymore for my studies but it’s a good introduction to the field of study. At times the German translations were unnecessary & annoying but on a few rare occasions they were also quite useful.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews