Around 100 crystal-clear articles explore landmark novels, short stories, plays, and poetry that reinvented the art of writing in their time, whether Ancient Greece, post-classical Europe, or modern-day Korea.Īs part of DK's award-winning Big Ideas Simply Explained series, The Literature Book uses infographics and images to explain key ideas and themes.

The Literature Book is a fascinating journey through the greatest works of world literature, from the Iliad to Don Quixote to The Great Gatsby. Very minimal wear and tear.A global look at the greatest works of Eastern and Western literature and the themes that unite them, for students and lovers of literature and reading. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, and no underlining/highlighting of text or writing in the margins. Publication City/Country: Melbourne, AustraliaĪ book that looks new but has been read. His work appears widely, including in The Times Literary Supplement, and he is a regular commentator on television and radio. The author of Out of Essex- Re-Imagining a Literary Landscape, which was inspired by his rural wanderings, he also runs workshops on writing nature and landscape. James Canton teaches the Wild Writing MA course at the University of Essex. Or do we? The natural world has lessons for us - if we slow down enough to listen. We no longer build our houses from the sturdy oak and its relatives, use them to fuel our fires or grind their seeds and nuts into flour in times of famine. In this stunning, meditative treatise, he examines our long-standing relationship with trees, a material as well as a source of myth and legend, and of solace. It was an exercise in discipline- he needed to slow down in order to appreciate it fully, to tune in to it, to connect with the ecosystem that lives around, inside and under it. James Canton spent two years sitting with and studying this unique tree. Colossal and wizened, it would have been a sapling when the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. This is the story of one man's relationship to an ancient tree, the Honywood Oak. You can stand beneath a grand oak and know that your more distant ancestors did so too.

The sense of security, of attachment to place, enchants us. Ancient oaks hold a powerful sense of the longevity of life. It is that sure-footedness that is so appealing. Oaks are born and die on the same patch of earth.

The Literature Book by James Canton