This book recreates in written form seventeen of the most popular, frankly personal and engaging lectures on literature given by the award-winning teacher Richard Jacobs, who has been working with students for over forty years. This is a book written for students, whether starting their studies or more experienced, and also for all lovers of literature. At its heart is the conviction that reading, thinking about, and writing or talking about literature involves us all personally: texts talk to us intimately and urgently, inviting us to talk back, intervening in and changing our lives.

These lectures discuss, in an open but richly informed way, a wide range of texts that are regularly studied and enjoyed. They model what it means to be excited about reading and studying literature, and how the study of literature can be life-changing - perhaps even with the effect of changing the lives of readers of this eloquent and remarkable book.

This book recreates in written form seventeen of the most popular, frankly personal and engaging lectures on literature given by the award-winning teacher Richard Jacobs, who has been working with students for over forty years. This is a book written for students, whether starting their studies or more experienced, and also for all lovers of literature. At its heart is the conviction that reading, thinking about, and writing or talking about literature involves us all personally: texts talk to us intimately and urgently, inviting us to talk back, intervening in and changing our lives.

These lectures discuss, in an open but richly informed way, a wide range of texts that are regularly studied and enjoyed. They model what it means to be excited about reading and studying literature, and how the study of literature can be life-changing - perhaps even with the effect of changing the lives of readers of this eloquent and remarkable book.

This 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 the book’s wide-ranging first chapter.

In his warm, clear and engaging style, Richard Jacobs provides the perfect introduction to literature and criticism. Literature and the Critics is a book to which students will want to return throughout their courses as they read more widely and encounter new texts and critical voices.

This 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 the book’s wide-ranging first chapter.

In his warm, clear and engaging style, Richard Jacobs provides the perfect introduction to literature and criticism. Literature and the Critics is a book to which students will want to return throughout their courses as they read more widely and encounter new texts and critical voices.

Narrative is everywhere and has unique powers: to enchant and inspire, to make sense of our lives and ourselves and to afford us an enriched understanding of alternative worlds and lives and of better futures – though narrative also has the potential to coerce and oppress. Narrative is at the centre at all stages of the English curriculum and has been the subject of a burgeoning critical industry. This timely volume addresses the many ways in which recent thinking has informed the teaching of narrative in university classrooms in the UK and the USA. Distinguished teachers from both countries range widely across narrative topics and genres, including the opportunities opened up by new technologies, and chapters articulate students’ own individual and collaborative experiences in the teaching/learning process. The result is a volume that explores the pleasurable challenges of working with students to help them appreciate and assess the power that narrative exerts, to become reflectivecritics of its inner workings as well as exponents of narrative themselves. 

This book recreates in written form seventeen of the most popular, frankly personal and engaging lectures on literature given by the award-winning teacher Richard Jacobs, who has been working with students for over forty years. This is a book written for students, whether starting their studies or more experienced, and also for all lovers of literature. At its heart is the conviction that reading, thinking about, and writing or talking about literature involves us all personally: texts talk to us intimately and urgently, inviting us to talk back, intervening in and changing our lives.

These lectures discuss, in an open but richly informed way, a wide range of texts that are regularly studied and enjoyed. They model what it means to be excited about reading and studying literature, and how the study of literature can be life-changing - perhaps even with the effect of changing the lives of readers of this eloquent and remarkable book.

This book recreates in written form seventeen of the most popular, frankly personal and engaging lectures on literature given by the award-winning teacher Richard Jacobs, who has been working with students for over forty years. This is a book written for students, whether starting their studies or more experienced, and also for all lovers of literature. At its heart is the conviction that reading, thinking about, and writing or talking about literature involves us all personally: texts talk to us intimately and urgently, inviting us to talk back, intervening in and changing our lives.

These lectures discuss, in an open but richly informed way, a wide range of texts that are regularly studied and enjoyed. They model what it means to be excited about reading and studying literature, and how the study of literature can be life-changing - perhaps even with the effect of changing the lives of readers of this eloquent and remarkable book.

This 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 the book’s wide-ranging first chapter.

In his warm, clear and engaging style, Richard Jacobs provides the perfect introduction to literature and criticism. Literature and the Critics is a book to which students will want to return throughout their courses as they read more widely and encounter new texts and critical voices.

This 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 the book’s wide-ranging first chapter.

In his warm, clear and engaging style, Richard Jacobs provides the perfect introduction to literature and criticism. Literature and the Critics is a book to which students will want to return throughout their courses as they read more widely and encounter new texts and critical voices.

Narrative is everywhere and has unique powers: to enchant and inspire, to make sense of our lives and ourselves and to afford us an enriched understanding of alternative worlds and lives and of better futures – though narrative also has the potential to coerce and oppress. Narrative is at the centre at all stages of the English curriculum and has been the subject of a burgeoning critical industry. This timely volume addresses the many ways in which recent thinking has informed the teaching of narrative in university classrooms in the UK and the USA. Distinguished teachers from both countries range widely across narrative topics and genres, including the opportunities opened up by new technologies, and chapters articulate students’ own individual and collaborative experiences in the teaching/learning process. The result is a volume that explores the pleasurable challenges of working with students to help them appreciate and assess the power that narrative exerts, to become reflectivecritics of its inner workings as well as exponents of narrative themselves.