Literary reflections

With both his range of interests and his breadth of perspective, R. W. B. Lewis has cut a broad swath through the world of letters over the decades. He has written on subjects from the Greek and Roman classics through modern European writers to such Americans as Ralph Ellison and Robert Penn Warren. He takes a special interest in the historical and biographical contests from which literature emerges. Here is the first collection of Lewis's essays in nearly thirty years, and it includes several never before published. As Lewis himself says, the volume represents "a retracing of cultural steps," as well as "the conflicting preoccupations of a humanist."