On the Familiar Essay: Challenging Academic Orthodoxies Book

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

1 The Observing Self, or Writing Upon Something: The Character, Art, and Distinctiveness of the Familiar Essay 1

2 On Time, the Familiar, and the Essay 31

3 Envisioning the Stranger's Heart 51

4 E.B. White and the Poetics of Participation 63

5 "The Way Life Should Be," or the Maine-ing of Existence: E.B. White as Familiar Essayist 73

6 The Limits of the Familiar: E.B. White and T.S. Eliot 93

7 Toward a Familiar Literary Criticism 103

8 Of Swords, Ploughshares, and Pens: The Return of/to Civility, Against Winning, and the Art of Peace 135

9 The Essay in the Academy: Between "Literature" and "Creative Writing" 149

10 Essaying to Be: Higher Education, the Vocation of Teaching, and the Making of Persons 161

Notes 177

Bibliography 191

Index 197