The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World
- 13h 36m 8s
- Lewis Hyde
- Blackstone Audio, Inc. dba Blackstone Publishing
- 2022
A modern classic cherished by many of the greatest artists of our time, The Gift is a brilliant, life-changing defense of the value of creative labor.
Drawing on examples from folklore and literature, history and tribal customs, economics and modern copyright law, Lewis Hyde demonstrates how our society - governed by the marketplace - is poorly equipped to determine the worth of artists’ work. He shows us that another way is possible: the alternative economy of the gift, which allows creations and ideas to circulate freely, rather than hoarding them as commodities.
Illuminating and transformative, The Gift is a triumph of originality and insight - an essential audiobook for anyone who has ever given or received a work of art.
About the Author
LEWIS HYDE is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. In addition to The Gift, he is the author of Trickster Makes This World; Common as Air; A Primer on Forgetting; and a book of poems, This Error is the Sign of Love. He has also published two volumes of translations of Nobel laureate Vicente Aleixandre’s poetry and is the editor of On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg and The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau. A MacArthur Fellow and former director of creative writing at Harvard University, Hyde was the Richard L. Thomas Professor in Creative Writing at Kenyon College until his retirement in 2018. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, the writer Patricia Vigderman.
In this Audiobook
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Introduction
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Chapter 1 - Some Food We Could Not Eat
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Chapter 2 - The Bones of the Dead
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Chapter 3 - The Labor of Gratitude
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Chapter 4 - The Bond
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Chapter 5 - The Gift Community
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Chapter 6 - A Female Property
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Chapter 7 - Usury: A History of Gift Exchange
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Chapter 8 - The Commerce of the Creative Spirit
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Chapter 9 - A Draft of Whitman
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Chapter 10 - Ezra Pound and the Fate of Vegetable Money
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Conclusion
