Seductio ad Absurdum
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in the history of marriage and gender concepts
- Readers curious about early twentieth-century English argumentation
- Students needing public-domain English materials for supplementary reading
- Those who prefer essay-style social observation over systematic textbooks
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking systematic theory in contemporary gender studies
- Those wanting a Chinese translation or chapter-by-chapter interpretation
- Specialist readers needing extensive data and empirical research
Reading tips
- Read the preface, table of contents, and chapter titles first to judge whether the book is argument, essay, or general commentary.
- Mark the author's core judgments about marriage and gender roles as you read, then compare them with contemporary views.
- When encountering the Latin title or allusions, look up their basic meaning first to avoid misreading the ironic tone.
- Consider reading alongside an introduction to gender history to help situate the text in its era.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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About the author
Emily Hahn (1905–1997) was an American writer and journalist who traveled in China and wrote both reportage and biography as well as works on cultural history. Two of her books are held here, Beginners Luck and Seductio Ad Absurdum, whose titles already suggest her brisk tone and ironic wit. She typically observed foreign societies and personalities as a firsthand witness, blending travel impressions, interviews, and historical context into concrete, readable prose rather than abstract argument, thus shaping a personal style between reportage and popular cultural writing. Public information about the details of her life is limited, so her education and full career cannot be described in depth; yet judging from her extant works and common assessments, she made serious subjects accessible and had some influence on cross-cultural observation and biographical writing.
