The Art of Astonishment: Reflections on Gifts and Grace

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Part literary history, part personal memoir, Alice Brittan's beautifully written The Art of Astonishment explores the rich intellectual, religious, and philosophical history of the gift and tells the interconnected story of grace: where it comes from and what it is believed to accomplish. Covering a remarkable range of materialsfrom The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Iliad, and the tragedies of Classical Greece, through the brothers Grimm and Montaigne, to C. S. Lewis, Toni Morrison, J. M. Coetzee, Elena Ferrante, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Jhumpa LahiriBrittan moves with ease from personal story to myth, to theology, to literature and analysis, examining the nature of social and communal obligation, the role of the intellectual in times of crisis, and the pleasures of reading. In the 21st century, we might imagine grace as a striking and refined quality that is pleasurable to encounter but certainly not fundamental to anyones existence or to the beliefs and practices that hold us together or drive us apart. For millennia, though, it has been recognized as essential to the vitality of inner life, as well as to the large-scale shifts in perspective and legislation that improve the way we live as a society. Grace is also astonishingalwaysas the enormously insightful readings in The Art of Astonishment show. Brittan reveals the concepts breadth as sacred and secular, ancient and recent, lived and literary. And in so doing, she shows us how the act of reading is like gracesocial but personal, pleasurable and essential.

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A beautifully written work that combines research, scholarly insights, and memoir in a fluid manner so hard to achieve. Brittans voice is so good--thoughtful, welcoming, lovely--and rendered in often captivating prose. The retrieval of stories and insights from the ancient Western world as a way of making sense of what to do now reminds us that not all Western legacies need be seen as negative. * Christopher Cokinos, Professor of English, University of Arizona, USA, and author of The Underneath and The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars *
A work of literary criticism that ranges widely across genres, historical periods, and geographical locations, The Art of Astonishment is also a moving work of memoir, a probing account of intergenerational trauma, and a hopeful meditation on those limits beyond which grace appears. Moving deftly--like Hermes, a presiding genius of her book--from Classical Greece to post-apartheid South Africa, from the Britain of her childhood to her present Canadian home, Alice Brittan has produced a remarkable critical-creative project in the best traditions of the philosophically minded critic, illustrating how cultural criticism might illuminate some of our most complex social and individual predicaments. Its insights will enrich and astonish. * Andrew van der Vlies, Professor of English and Creative Writing, University of Adelaide, Australia *
A rich tapestry of extensive cultural knowledge and intimate personal experience ... guaranteed to surprise most readers with its sometimes disturbing but always fascinating insights. * Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap / Journal of Literary Studies *

Author Bio

Alice Brittan is Associate Professor of World Literature at Dalhousie University, Canada. Her essays on contemporary fiction have appeared in journals such as PMLA and Contemporary Literature, and in several book collections, including the Routledge Companion to Postcolonial Studies (2007) and Modernism, Postcolonialism, and Globalism (2019).