Abstract

Dr. Zaslavsky has gathered together forty essays that represent the fruits of his lifetime of reading and teaching. The essays exemplify a method of reading substantive works that has been called Talmudic. The essays examine works by Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Moses Maimonides, Kant, DeQuincey, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Keats, Poe, Melville, Dickinson, Frost, Sherwood Anderson, Fitzgerald, cummings, Neruda, Arthur Miller, and Faulkner. In addition, there are essays on the Bible, the Constitution, and detective fiction. In every instance, the examined author is treated as a highly deliberate, conscious craftsperson whose intention it is the reader’s task to discern.