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In this provocative tour de force, the critically
acclaimed author of Reinventing Shakespeare creates
a new paradigm for understanding cultural history. Culture,
Gary Taylor argues, is not what was done, but what is remembered,
and the social competition among different memories is as
dynamically complicated as the struggle for biological survival.
That struggle for culture -- driven by emotions as basic
as grief, pride, and resentment -- the foundation of personal
and national identity.
Taylor illustrates his arguments by reintroducing
us to imaginative achievements that continue to stimulate
us long after their creation, from Stonehenge to Hollywood
-- including Oedipus, Casablanca, the paintings
of Velazquez, Michelangelo's sculptures, Japanese literature,
Native American narratives, science fiction, the music of
Stravinsky, Shakespeare's plays, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
He also discusses the endurance of social phenomena as disparate
as the global impact of the Old Testament and the evolving
reputation of Richard Nixon.
Through lively and engaging stories of artistic
determination in the face of historical happenstance and
social indifference, Taylor transcends the familiar polemics
about "culture wars" to explain why and how such
wars are fought in the first place. Cultural Selection
is indispensable reading for everyone who is eager to understand
the cultural controversies of the past -- and the present.
Gary Taylor is Director of the Hudson
Strode Program in Renaissance Studies at the University
of Alabama and has previously taught at Brandeis and Oxford
Universities. A world-renowned Shakespeare scholar, he is
the author of Reinventing Shakespeare ("the
most ambitious book on Shakespeare ever written," according
to Shakespeare Quarterly) and the general editor of the
Oxford edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare
(described by the Sunday Times of London as "the
most interesting edition since 1623"). He divides his
life between Alabama and Massachusetts.
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