Description
Book SynopsisThis timely volume presents a rich and absorbing selection of extracts from over two hundred leading literary critics of the last several decades, writing on many of the most widely studied literary texts in English, from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison.
Structured chronologically, working through familiar literary periods, this book presents illuminating and stimulating examples of critical readings of familiar texts, demonstrating a variety of methods and approaches to critical practice. The range of critical voices represented from Abrams and Adelman to Zimmerman and Žižek provides students with eloquent and insightful models of how to read, think and write about texts so that they can form their own critical responses and develop as independent readers. The book also shows how criticism has developed over time and how it has always been intimately involved in wider cultural, social and political debates. Connections between criticism, culture and politics are explored in t
Trade Review
‘[I]n covering English literature from Shakespeare to postmodernism, it manages to make the subject sound both entertaining and important; the study of literature being a way of understanding the world and the mind—and also, by extension, as a kind of dissolving agent through which we can see the hypocrisies and motives of a malign state. And it is also hugely readable.’ - Nicholas Lezard, The New Statesman, 6th July 2022
'Literature and the Critics enriches our understanding of literature, modern and contemporary culture, and our place in the world. While the texts examined in it are often dark and disturbing and the critical terminology employed to interpret those texts sometimes difficult, the book’s drive, energy, and occasional combativeness make for a compelling and instructive read. At a time when academic freedom and the very notion of dissent are under threat, Literature and the Critics celebrates iconoclasm, freethinking, skepticism, confrontation, self-reflection, and fresh ideas.' - Rod Keller, The Use of English, 74.1, Autumn 2022
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Literature, criticism, culture, and why they matter 2. Shakespeare 3. Early modern literature 1590-1690 4. Early romantic writings 1750-1800 5. Later romantic writings 1790-1830 6. Realist fiction in England and America 1840-1870 7. Realism towards modernism: English and American fiction 1870-1900 8. Modernisms: British, Irish and American literature 1890-1970 9. Postmodernity and the contemporary novel 1970-2020
