True Stories and Other Essays

Spufford, Francis. 2017. True Stories and Other Essays. London/New Haven CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300230055 [Book]

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Abstract or Description

Essay collection

Francis Spufford’s welcome first volume of collected essays gathers an array of his compelling writings from the 1990s to the present. He makes use of a variety of encounters with particular places, writers, or books to address deeper questions relating to the complicated relationship between story-telling and truth-telling. How must a nonfiction writer imagine facts, vivifying them to bring them to life? How must a novelist create a dependable world of story, within which facts are, in fact, imaginary? And how does a religious faith felt strongly to be true, but not provably so, draw on both kinds of writerly imagination?

Ranging freely across topics as diverse as the medieval legends of Cockaigne, the Christian apologetics of C. S. Lewis, and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini, Spufford provides both fresh observations and thought-provoking insights. No less does he inspire an irresistible urge to turn the page and read on.

Item Type:

Book

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

English and Comparative Literature

Date:

24 October 2017

Item ID:

21052

Date Deposited:

26 Sep 2017 11:24

Last Modified:

02 Feb 2018 17:28

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/21052

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