Hospitality and Treachery in Western Literature

Heffernan James A. W.

In works of Western literature ranging from Homer's "Odyssey" to Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" The giving and taking of hospitality are sometimes pleasurable, but more often perilous. Heffernan traces this leitmotiv through the history of our greatest writings, including Christ's "Last Supper", Macbeth's murder of his royal guest, and Camus' short story of French colonialism in Arab Algeria. By means of such examples and many more, this book considers what literary hosts, hostesses, and guests do to as well as for each other. In doing so, it shows how often treachery rends the fabric of trust that hospitality weaves.

About the Author

James A. W. Hefferman, Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College, is the author of "Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery", "Cultivating Picturacy: Visual Art and Verbal Interventions", and "The Re-Creation of Landscape: A Study of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Constable, and Turner". He is also founding editor of Review 19, an online review of books on nineteenth-century English and American literature.

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