Research Catalog

Creating literature out of life : the making of four masterpieces : Death in Venice, Treasure island, The rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, War and peace

Title: Creating literature out of life : the making of four masterpieces : Death in Venice, Treasure island, The rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, War and peace / Doris Alexander.
Author: Alexander, Doris.
Publication: University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press, [1996], ©1996.

Filter by

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	PN871 .A44 1996	Off-site

Description

253 pages : illustrations, portraits; 24 cm

Summary

Creating Literature Out of Life examines four very dissimilar masterpieces and their authors in search of evidence that will answer some of the many questions in the great mystery of creativity. Crossing boundaries of period, nation, and genre, the study looks into the "why" and "how" of the creation of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, Edward FitzGerald's The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Lev Tolstoy's War and Peace.
Doris Alexander finds that each of these works was compelled by an urgent life problem of its author, some of them partly conscious, others completely unconscious, which worked in harmony and counterpoint with the author's conscious theme to shape his work.
She traces an interconnected nexus of memories - personal experiences, ideas, readings - that came alive in response to the author's problem and served as a reservoir out of which his characters, his images, his story line, and the emotional tone of his work emerged. Creating Literature Out of Life tells the exciting story of how Mann, Stevenson, FitzGerald, and Tolstoy fought out their major life battles in their works.

Subjects

Bibliography (note)

ISBN

0271015497

LCCN

95043556

OCLC

ocm33335038

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries