Weds., April 13
The Use and Abuse of Literature

The National Endowment for the Arts found that roughly half of the adults who filled out the 2002 Census had not read any novels, short stories, poetry or plays in their free time. What does this all say about the state of literature? Is the prose and poetry, from Dickens to Dickinson no longer relevant in the 21st century?

Not a chance says our guest, author Marjorie Garber. The Harvard English professor—perhaps best known for her work on Shakespeare—takes a deep exploration of what literature is –in all it’s iterations-- In her new book, The Use and Abuse of Literature. We’ll look at what qualifies as literature. Is it the rarefied text that can only be fully appreciated in a college classroom? Or, can it be the stuff of a paperback potboiler?