William Egginton's Books

The Man Who Invented Fiction

How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World

By: William Egginton

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The Man Who Invented Fiction

How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World

By: William Egginton

“A heroic history of novel-reading itself.” --The Atlantic In the early seventeenth century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a book. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from reading too many books of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That book, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history. Cervantes did more than just publish a bestseller, though. He invented a way of writing. This book is about how Cervantes came to create what we now call fiction, and how fiction changed the world. The Man Who Invented Fiction explores Cervantes's life and the world he lived in, showing how his influences converged in his work, and how his work--especially Don Quixote--radically changed the nature of literature and created a new way of viewing the world. Finally, it explains how that worldview went on to infiltrate art, politics, and science, and how the world today would be unimaginable without it. William Egginton has brought thrilling new meaning to an immortal novel.

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273

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1635570247

ISBN 13

9781635570243

The Splintering of the American Mind

Identity Politics, Inequality, and Community on Today’s College Campuses

By: William Egginton

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The Splintering of the American Mind

Identity Politics, Inequality, and Community on Today’s College Campuses

By: William Egginton

A timely, provocative, necessary look at how identity politics has come to dominate college campuses and higher education in America at the expense of a more essential commitment to equality. Thirty years after the culture wars, identity politics is now the norm on college campuses-and it hasn't been an unalloyed good for our education system or the country. Though the civil rights movement, feminism, and gay pride led to profoundly positive social changes, William Egginton argues that our culture's increasingly narrow focus on individual rights puts us in a dangerous place. The goal of our education system, and particularly the liberal arts, was originally to strengthen community; but the exclusive focus on individualism has led to a new kind of intolerance, degrades our civic discourse, and fatally distracts progressive politics from its commitment to equality. Egginton argues that our colleges and universities have become exclusive, expensive clubs for the cultural and economic elite instead of a national, publicly funded project for the betterment of the country. Only a return to the goals of community, and the egalitarian values underlying a liberal arts education, can head off the further fracturing of the body politic and the splintering of the American mind. With lively, on-the-ground reporting and trenchant analysis, The Splintering of the American Mind is a powerful book that is guaranteed to be controversial within academia and beyond. At this critical juncture, the book challenges higher education and every American to reengage with our history and its contexts, and to imagine our nation in new and more inclusive ways.

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275

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1635571332

ISBN 13

9781635571332

In Defense of Religious Moderation

By: William Egginton

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In Defense of Religious Moderation

By: William Egginton

William Egginton laments the current debate over religion in America, in which religious fundamentalists have set the tone of political discourse--no one can get elected without advertising a personal relation to God, for example--and prominent atheists treat religious belief as the root of all evil. Neither of these positions, Egginton argues, adequately represents the attitudes of a majority of Americans who, while identifying as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, do not find fault with those who support different faiths and philosophies. In fact, Egginton goes so far as to question whether fundamentalists and atheists truly oppose each other, united as they are in their commitment to a "code of codes." Fundamentalists--and stringent atheists--unconsciously believe that the methods we use to understand the world are all versions of an underlying master code. This code of codes represents an ultimate truth, explaining everything. The moderately religious, with their inherent skepticism toward a master code, are best suited to protect science, politics, and other diverse strains of knowledge from fundamentalist attack and to promote a worldview based on the compatibility between religious faith and scientific method.

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186

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

023114878X

ISBN 13

9780231148788

The Rigor of Angels

Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

By: William Egginton

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The Rigor of Angels

Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

By: William Egginton

A NEW YORK TIMES AND NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A poet, a physicist, and a philosopher explored the greatest enigmas in the universe—the nature of free will, the strange fabric of the cosmos, the true limits of the mind—and each in their own way uncovered a revelatory truth about our place in the world “[A] mind-expanding book. . . . Elegantly written.” —The New York Times “A remarkable synthesis of the thoughts, ideas, and discoveries of three of the greatest minds that our species has produced.” —John Banville, The Wall Street Journal Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth—that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn’t exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment on the meaning of the quantum realm’s absurdity when he had his own epiphany—that there is no such thing as a complete, perfect description of reality. Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant pushed the assumptions of human reason to their mind-bending conclusions, but emerged with an idea that crowned a towering philosophical system—that the human mind has fundamental limits, and those limits undergird both our greatest achievements as well as our missteps. Through fiction, science, and philosophy, the work of these three thinkers coalesced around the powerful, haunting fact that there is an irreconcilable difference between reality “out there” and reality as we experience it. Out of this profound truth comes a multitude of galvanizing ideas: the notion of selfhood, free will, and purpose in human life; the roots of morality, aesthetics, and reason; and the origins and nature of the cosmos itself. As each of these thinkers shows, every one of us has an incomplete picture of the world. But it's only as mortal, finite beings are we able to experience the world in its richness and breathtaking majesty. A soaring and lucid reflection on the lives and work of Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant, The Rigor of Angels movingly demonstrates that the mysteries of our place in the world may always loom over us—not as a threat, but as a reminder of our humble humanity.

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369

Publisher

Pantheon

Published Date

ISBN 10

0593316312

ISBN 13

9780593316313

How the World Became a Stage

Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity

By: William Egginton

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How the World Became a Stage

Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity

By: William Egginton

What is special, distinct, modern about modernity? In How the World Became a Stage, William Egginton argues that the experience of modernity is fundamentally spatial rather than subjective and proposes replacing the vocabulary of subjectivity with the concepts of presence and theatricality. Following a Heideggerian injunctive to search for the roots of epochal change not in philosophies so much as in basic skills and practices, he describes the spatiality of modernity on the basis of a close historical analysis of the practices of spectacle from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period, paying particular attention to stage practices in France and Spain. He recounts how the space in which the world is disclosed changed from the full, magically charged space of presence to the empty, fungible, and theatrical space of the stage.

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Page Count

217

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0791487717

ISBN 13

9780791487716

The Philosopher's Desire

Psychoanalysis, Interpretation, and Truth

By: William Egginton

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The Philosopher's Desire

Psychoanalysis, Interpretation, and Truth

By: William Egginton

This book is about interpretation as it pertains to literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. It argues against certain trends of thought that claim we should do without interpretation by demonstrating that interpretation, as described by psychoanalysis, is already a fundamental aspect of all human experience. Egginton examines the idea of interpretation developed by Freud; how that notion was in turn changed by Lacan; the debate around psychoanalytic interpretation staged by philosophers like Deleuze and Derrida; and finally how a psychoanalytic notion of interpretation is necessary for even the most basic experience of consciousness.

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184

Published Date

ISBN 10

0804768277

ISBN 13

9780804768276

How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture

The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century

By: Kyle William Bishop

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How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture

The Multifarious Walking Dead in the 21st Century

By: Kyle William Bishop

Since the early 2000s, popular culture has experienced a "Zombie Renaissance," beginning in film and expanding into books, television, video games, theatre productions, phone apps, collectibles and toys. Zombies have become allegorical figures embodying cultural anxieties, but they also serve as models for concepts in economics, political theory, neuroscience, psychology, computer science and astronomy. They are powerful, multifarious metaphors representing fears of contagion and doom but also isolation and abandonment, as well as troubling aspects of human cruelty, public spectacle and abusive relationships. This critical examination of the 21st-century zombie phenomenon explores how and why the public imagination has been overrun by the undead horde.

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Page Count

237

Publisher

McFarland

Published Date

ISBN 10

1476622086

ISBN 13

9781476622088

The Rigor of Angels

Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

By: William Eggington

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The Rigor of Angels

Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality

By: William Eggington

A poet, a physicist, and a philosopher explore the greatest enigmas of the universe in this scintillatingly original book about the limits of human knowledge 'Fascinating' Carlo Rovelli 'Remarkable... Exciting, provocative, and illuminating' John Banville, Wall Street Journal Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth – that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn't exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment about the absurdity of the quantum realm when he had his own epiphany – that there is no such thing as a complete, perfect description of reality. Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant pushed the assumptions of human reason as far as they could go, concluding that the human mind has fundamental limits, and those limits undergird both our greatest achievements and our missteps. Through fiction, science, and philosophy, the work of these three thinkers coalesced around one powerful, haunting truth: there is an irreconcilable difference between reality "out there" and reality as we experience it. In this soaring, lucid narrative, William Egginton profoundly demonstrates the enduring mystery of the world, and our place within it.

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Page Count

265

Publisher

Pushkin Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1805337661

ISBN 13

9781805337669

What Would Cervantes Do?

Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature

By: David Castillo,William Egginton

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What Would Cervantes Do?

Navigating Post-Truth with Spanish Baroque Literature

By: David Castillo,William Egginton

The attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 was a tragic illustration of the existential threat that the viral spread of disinformation poses in the age of social media and twenty-four-hour news. From climate change denialism to the frenzied conspiracy theories and racist mythologies that fuel antidemocratic white nationalist movements in the United States and abroad, What Would Cervantes Do? is a lucid meditation on the key role the humanities must play in dissecting and combatting all forms of disinformation. David Castillo and William Egginton travel back to the early modern period, the first age of inflationary media, in search of historically tested strategies to overcome disinformation and shed light on our post-truth market. Through a series of critical conversations between cultural icons of the twenty-first century and those of the Spanish Golden Age, What Would Cervantes Do? provides a tour-de-force commentary on current politics and popular culture. Offering a diverse range of Cervantist comparative readings of contemporary cultural texts –movies, television shows, and infotainment – alongside ideas and issues from literary and cultural texts of early modern Spain, Castillo and Egginton present a new way of unpacking the logic of contemporary media. What Would Cervantes Do? is an urgent and timely self-help manual for literary scholars and humanists of all stripes, and a powerful toolkit for reality literacy.

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201

Publisher

McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published Date

ISBN 10

0228009316

ISBN 13

9780228009313

Medialogies

Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media

By: David R. Castillo,William Egginton

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Medialogies

Reading Reality in the Age of Inflationary Media

By: David R. Castillo,William Egginton

We are living in a time of inflationary media. While technological change has periodically altered and advanced the ways humans process and transmit knowledge, for the last 100 years the media with which we produce, transmit, and record ideas have multiplied in kind, speed, and power. Saturation in media is provoking a crisis in how we perceive and understand reality. Media become inflationary when the scope of their representation of the world outgrows the confines of their culture's prior grasp of reality. We call the resulting concept of reality that emerges the culture's medialogy. Medialogies offers a highly innovative approach to the contemporary construction of reality in cultural, political, and economic domains. Castillo and Egginton, both luminary scholars, combine a very accessible style with profound theoretical analysis, relying not only on works of philosophy and political theory but also on novels, Hollywood films, and mass media phenomena. The book invites us to reconsider the way reality is constructed, and how truth, sovereignty, agency, and authority are understood from the everyday, philosophical, and political points of view. A powerful analysis of actuality, with its roots in early modernity, this work is crucial to understanding reality in the information age.

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Page Count

289

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1628923598

ISBN 13

9781628923599

In Defense of Religious Moderation

By: William Egginton

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In Defense of Religious Moderation

By: William Egginton

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186

Publisher

Columbia University Press

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ISBN 10

023114878X

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9780231148788

Book's by William Egginton

The Man Who Invented Fiction

The Man Who Invented Fiction

The Splintering of the American Mind

The Splintering of the American Mind

In Defense of Religious Moderation

In Defense of Religious Moderation

The Rigor of Angels

The Rigor of Angels

How the World Became a Stage

How the World Became a Stage

The Philosopher's Desire

The Philosopher's Desire

How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture

How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture

The Rigor of Angels

The Rigor of Angels

What Would Cervantes Do?

What Would Cervantes Do?

Medialogies

Medialogies

In Defense of Religious Moderation

In Defense of Religious Moderation

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