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Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 Edition World Literature                 Mythology, Psychology, & Anthropology

                  The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Roberto Calasso      Prometheus: Archetypal Image of Human Existence, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion, Hermes: Guide of Souls, Apollo: The Wind, the Spirit, and the God: Four Studies, Zeus and Hera, Essays on … Continue reading Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 Edition World Literature                 Mythology, Psychology, & Anthropology

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Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 Edition World Literature: Spain

                   History      Buried Mirror, Fuentes      Farewell Espana, Sachar      Age of Philip II, Braudel      1492: The Year the World Began, A Foot in the River, Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States, The World: A History, Millennium: A History of the Last Thousand Years, Columbus, Pathfinders: A Global History … Continue reading Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 Edition World Literature: Spain

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Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 edition World Literature:  Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden. Denmark, & Iceland 

     History      The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe, Michael Pye       A History of the Vikings, The Norse Atlantic Saga: Being the Norse Voyages of Discovery and Settlement to Iceland, Greenland, and North America, Gwynn Jones      The Children of Ash and Elm: … Continue reading Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 edition World Literature:  Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden. Denmark, & Iceland 

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Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 Edition World Literature: Russia

                    History      Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, Suzanne Massie      Natasha’s Dance:: a cultural history of Russia, Revolutionary Russia 1891-1991, Orlando Figes      Russia and the Russians: A History, Geoffrey Hosking       St Petersburg: a history, The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn, Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky: … Continue reading Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 Edition World Literature: Russia

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Philip K. Dick, on his birthday December 16 2021 revision

    Metaphysical fantasies, Surrealism and dreams, a Quixotic tilting at authoritarian power structures, the world as a prison of the flesh and a web of treacherous illusions, varieties of truth and lies, madness and the ecstatic liberation of consciousness as well as the possibilities of re-editing humanity through chemistry and allied to the psychedelic-Surrealist mission … Continue reading Philip K. Dick, on his birthday December 16 2021 revision

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Gustave Flaubert, on his birthday December 12 2021 revision

     Writing as a form of scientific inquiry, detached, precise, visually oriented and object- directed thinking, a language of surfaces and not essences; Gustave Flaubert was a collector of characters, witticisms, convolutions of language who pursued an elusive humanity with the aloofness of Descartes’ rationalism. His aesthetic goal was to absent the authorial voice entirely; … Continue reading Gustave Flaubert, on his birthday December 12 2021 revision

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                             Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 Edition World Literature: Jewish People

                                  Wanderings: Chaim Potok’s History of the Jews      The Story of the Jews Volume One: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD, Volume Two: Belonging: 1492-1900, Simon Schama     Jerusalem: The Biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore      Personal Witness: Israel, Abba Iban      Israel, Gilbert      The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, … Continue reading                              Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 Edition World Literature: Jewish People

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William Blake, on his birthday November 28 2021 revision

     “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s.” William Blake       Satires of both Church and State authority, radical freedom and a revolutionary engagement with aristocratic tyranny and the English monarchy,  a visionary theology which privileges direct personal insight and relationship with the Infinite without a filtering system of priests or … Continue reading William Blake, on his birthday November 28 2021 revision

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Eugene Ionesco, on his birthday November 26 2021 revision

     Dreams, visions, and the upending of conventions, an art of interrogation by the shifting of contexts, paradoxes and koan-like performances constructed as riddle-tests of initiation; Eugene Ionesco pursued a theatre of radical freedom which challenges us to live meaningfully.      Sartrean authenicity is among his major themes; the falsification of identity by multiplication, mass … Continue reading Eugene Ionesco, on his birthday November 26 2021 revision

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Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 Edition World Literature: Japan

                     History      A History of Japan, Revised Edition, R.H.P. Mason, J.G. Caiger      Tokyo from Edo to Showa 1867-1989: The Emergence of the World’s Greatest City, Edward G. Seidensticker      Wrong About Japan, Peter Carey      A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations, The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto, Pico … Continue reading Jay’s Revised Modern Canon 2021 Edition World Literature: Japan