Longman Critical Readers – serie

This collection of selected writings represents the best of recent critical work on Milton. The essays cover all stages of his career, from the early poems through to the later poems of the Restoration period, especially Paradise Lost. Professor Patterson includes British and American critics such as Michael Wilding, Victoria Kahn, James Grantham Turner and Mary Ann Radzinowicz and guides the reader through the varied ways Milton's achievement has been explored and debated by modern criticism.

New Historicism has been one of the major developments in literary theory over the last decade, both in the USA and Europe. In this book, Wilson and Dutton examine the theories behind New Historicism and its celebrated impact in practice on Renaissance Drama, providing an important collection both for students of the genre and of literary theory.

The essays in this volume have all been carefully chosen by Cynthia Chase to exemplify the most important strands in contemporary critical thought on Romantic literature, in particular the best of recent feminist, deconstructive, and new historicist writing. They include contributions from critics such as Paul de Man, Mary Jacobus, Marjorie Levinson and Jerome Christensen. The collection, with its substantial introduction and judicious selection of key work, explains the significance of recent critical debate by relating it to fundamental critical questions that define Romanticism. Through the course of their analyses the essays offer answers to perhaps the most essential question posed by the Romantic period: what is the role of language in history?

Looks at the work of a range of critics, including Elaine Showalter, Kate Millett, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and the French feminists. The critical approaches encompass Marxist feminism and contemporary critical theory as well as other forms of discourse. It also provides an overview of the developments in feminist literary theory, and covers all the major debates within literary feminism, including "male feminism".

This book, the first single volume to collate essays about sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry, explores the remarkable changes that have occurred in the interpretation of English Renaissance poetry in the last twenty years. In the introduction Cristina Malcolmson argues that recent critical approaches have transformed traditional accounts of literary history by analysing the role of poetry in nationalism, the changing associations of poetry and class-status, and the rediscovered writings of women. The collection represents many of the critical methodologies which have contributed to these changes: new historicism, cultural materialism, feminism, and an historically informed psychoanalytic criticism. In particular, three diverse readings of Spenser's 'Bower of Bliss' canto illustrate the different approaches of formalist close-reading, new historicist analysis of cultural imperialism and feminist interpretations of the relation of gender and power. The further reading section categorizes recent work according to issues and critical approaches.

The outlines of contemporary critical theory are now often taught as a standard feature of a degree in literary studies. This text aims to explore the theoretical issues and conflicts embodied in the essays selected and locates areas of disagreement between positions.

Marxism has had an enormous impact on literary and cultural studies, and all those interested in the field need to be aware of its achievements. This collection presents the very best of recent Marxist literary criticism in one single volume.An international group of contributors provide an introduction to the development, current trends and evolution of the subject. They include such notable Marxist critics as Tony Bennett, Terry Eagleton, Edward W. Said, Raymond Williams and Fredric Jameson. A diverse range of subjects are analysed such as James Bond, Brecht, Jane Austen and the modern history of the aesthetic.

Rachel Bowlby's anthology of articles conjures up the enormous richness and variety of recent work that returns to Woolf not so much for final answers as for insights into questions about writing, literary traditions and the differences of the sexes. The collection includes pieces by such well-known writers as Gillian Beer, Mary Jacobus, Peggy Kamuf and Catharine Stimpson.

This series takes up the challenge of contemporary literary theory, providing collections of seminal modern readings of key authors, genres and critical approaches. This volume analyzes T.S. Eliot.

The concepts of 'Modernism' and 'Postmodernism' constitute the single most dominant issue of twentieth-century literature and culture and are the cause of much debate. In this influential volume, Peter Brooker presents some of the key viewpoints from a variety of major critics and sets these additionally alongside challenging arguments from Third World, Black and Feminist perspectives. His excellent Introduction and detailed headnotes for each section and essay provide an indispensable guide to interpreting the many different opinions, and prove to be valuable contributions in their own right.

This collection of essays provides students of literary critical theory with an introduction to Freudian methods of interpretation, and shows how those methods have been transformed by recent developments in French psychoanalysis, particularly by the influence of Jacques Lacan. It explains how classical Freudian criticism tended to focus on the thematic content of the literary text, whereas Lacanian criticism focuses on its linguistic structure, redirecting the reader to the words themselves. Concepts and methods are defined by tracing the role played by the drama of Oedipus in the development of psychoanalytic theory and criticism. The essays cover a wide generic scope and are divided into three parts: drama, narrative and poetry. Each is accompanied by explanatory headnotes giving clear definitions of complex terms.

Attacked by T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis, Shelley's poetry has, over the last few decades, enjoyed a revival of critical interest. His radical politics and arrestingly original poetic strategies have been studied from a variety of perspectives - formalist, deconstructionist, new historicist, feminist and others. Of all the Romantics, Shelly has benefited most from the so-called 'theoretical revolution', as is borne out by the wide range of recent critical work represented in this volume. The 134 essays selected analyse many of Shelley's finest poems, including Alastor, Julian and Maddalo, Prometheus Unbound, Adonais and The Triumph of Life. Michael O'Neill's informed Introduction explores the contours of this debate. Detailed headnotes to the individual essays, explanations of difficult terms, and a further reading section provide invaluable guides to the reader. This collection illuminates the enduring and contemporary significance of the work of a major poet.

The English Novel, Volume I:1700 to Fielding collects a series of previously-published essays on the early eighteenth-century novel in a single volume, reflecting the proliferation of theoretical approaches since the 1970s. The novel has been the object of some of the most exciting and important critical speculations, and the eighteenth-century novel has been at the centre of new approaches both to the novel and to the period between 1700 and 1750. Richard Kroll's introduction seeks to frame the contributions by reference to the most significant critical discussions. These include: the question of whether and how we can talk about the 'rise' of the novel; the vexed question of what might constitute a novel; the relationship between the novel and possibly competing genres such as history or the romance; the relationship between early male writers like Defoe and popular novels by women in the early eighteenth century; the general ideological role played by novels relative to eighteenth-century culture (are they means of ideological conscription or liberation?); poststructuralist analyses of identity and gender; and the emergence of sentimental and domestic codes after Richardson.Since the modern European novel is often thought to have been formed in this period, these debates have clear implications for students of the novel in general as well as for those interested in the early enlightenment. Headnotes place each essay within the map of these wider concerns, and the volume offers a useful further reading list. Taken as a whole, this collection encapsulates the state of criticism at the present moment.

During the twentieth century, the medium of film has developed as a means of understanding the complexity of modern life. Since 1968, film theory has concentrated not so much on theme or content but on the deeper question of how the medium works on its viewer. Film theory has been profoundly influenced by the writings of such modern thinkers as Saussure, Freud, Lacan, Anthusser, Derrida and Kristeva. It combines modes of textual analysis relating to linguistics and semiology, a Marxist reading of ideology, and theories of subjectivity, the spectator and gender redefined by psychoanalysis.This judicious selection from key work by Stephen Heath, Fredric Jameson, Laura Mulvey, Mary Ann Doanne and others, represents some of the most important contemporary writing about film. It provides a consistent and developing analysis that will be of interest to students concerned with film and film studies, as well as students of cultural, media and communication studies.

The English Novel, Volume II: Smollett to Austen collects a series of previously-published essays on the early eighteenth-century novel in a single volume, reflecting the proliferation of theoretical approaches since the 1970s. The novel has been the object of some of the most exciting and important critical speculations, and the eighteenth-century novel has been at the centre of new approaches both to the novel and to the period between 1750 and 1800. Richard Kroll's introduction seeks to frame the contributions by reference to the most significant critical discussions. These include: the general importance of 'sentimentalism' as a cultural movement after 1750; its relationship to the emergence of the Gothic novel as a specific genre or mode; the rapid rise in the number of women novelists in the later eighteenth century; the relationship between the novel as mediator of social relations and the idea of the 'public sphere'; the relationship between novelistic codes and the massive growth of a consumerist society; the class conflicts of writers like Smollett; the effect on the novel of the new 'British' nation; and the effects of the French Revolution and the subsequent political debates on writers like Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and Austen.This collection will be of interest to students of the later enlightenment, and also to all who are interested in late eighteenth-century radicalism, and the general relationship between literature, history, and politics.

A collection of documents relating to the literary theme of tragedy, illustrating the foundations of contemporary thinking on the subject and reflecting the continuing debate on the subject. In the LONGMAN CRITICAL READER series.

This anthology explores all the major critical approaches to Dickens of the 1970s-1990s, including psychoanalytic, deconstructive, discourse-analytic, feminist and Marxist, enabling the reader to compare and contrast different treatments of particular Dickens novels.

Much literary criticism focuses on literary producers and their products, but an important part of such work considers the end-user, the reader. It asks such questions as: how far can the author condition the response of the reader, and how much does the reader create the meaning of a text? Dr Bennett's collection includes important essays from such writers and critics as Wolfgang Iser, Mary Jacobus, Roger Chartier, Michel de Certeau, Shoshana Felman, Maurice Blanchot, Paul de Man and Yves Bonnefoy. It looks in turn at deconstructionist, feminist, new historicist and psychoanalytical response to the school. The book then considers the act of reading itself, discussing such issues as the uniqueness of any reading and the difficulties involved in its analysis.

This text contains sections covering the definition of metafiction, historiographic metafiction and the writer and critic. It includes selected readings of metafiction.

Interest in Ben Jonson is higher today than at any time since his death. This new collection offers detailed readings of all the major plays - Volpone, Epicene, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair - and the poems. It also provides significant insights into the court masques and the later plays which have only recently been rediscovered as genuinely engaging stage pieces.

This collection of essays on Andrew Marvell examines his poems including "To His Coy Mistress" and "The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn"and looks at his writings about Cromwell and Republican Civil War culture.

This collection of critical thinking situates the satire of Jonathan Swift within both its eighteenth-century contexts and our modern anxieties about personal identity and communication. Augustan satire at its most provocative is not simply concerned with the public matters of politics or religion, but also offers a precise medium in which to express the paradox of ironic detachment amidst deep conviction.The critics chosen for this volume demonstrate the complexity of Swift's work. Its four sections explore matters of authorial identity, the relation between Swift's writing and its historical context, the full range of his comments on gender, and his deployment of metaphor and irony to engage the reader. Swift has often been regarded as a writer who anticipated many twentieth-century cultural preoccupations, and this volume provides an opportunity to test just how modern he actually was. It also provides an answer to those who would wish to simplify his writing as that of Tory and misogynist. The theoretical perspectives of the contributors are lucidly explained and their critical terms located in the wider contexts of contemporary theory in the introduction and headnotes. The volume places Swift historically within the philosophical and religious traditions of eighteenth-century thought.

This collection brings together critical essays that examine questions of identity and community in the fiction of contemporary American women writers among them Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisnernos. The essays consider how identities and societies are dramatized in particular works of fiction, and how these works reflect cultural communities outside the fictional frame - often the communities in which their authors live and work. The essays included here concern fictional representations of African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, Anglo and Euro-American communities and their working interactions in the multicultural United States. Each critic asks, in his or her own way, how a particular writer transforms her social grounding into language and literature.The introduction includes an overview of the range of literary criticism devoted to contemporary American women writers, and an extensive bibliography of complementary critical readings is provided to encourage further study. Undergraduate and postgraduate students of contemporary literature will find the text an invaluable guide to contemporary women's writing in America, and the range of criticism that this has given rise to.

The fin de siecle, the period 1880-1914, long associated with decadence and with the literary movements of aestheticism and symbolism, has received renewed critical interest recently. This book introduces fin de siecle cultural studies and commentates on aspects of current critical debate.

Provides a critical account of the life and works of Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe is studied as a man who staged the birth of the modern author, and for his representations of sexuality and homosexuality. This text portrays a wide range of critical approaches and provides theoretical grounding.

The collection of essays presented in this volume represents some of the best recent critical work on William Blake as poet, prophet, visual artist, and social and political critic of his time.The critical range that is represented includes examples of Marxist, New Historicist, Feminist and Psychoanalytical approaches to Blake. Taken together, the essays consider all areas and moments of Blake's career as poet, from the early lyrics to his later epic poems, and they have been chosen to reveal not only the range of Blake's concerns but also to alert the reader to the rich variety of contemporary criticism that is devoted to him. Although the majority of essays are devoted to Blake as poet, others consider his work as printmaker, illustrator, and visionary artist. However severely individual essays choose to judge him, ultimately all the contributions to this book affirm Blake as one of the great geniuses of English art and letters.William Blake provides a valuable introduction by one of Britain's foremost critics and will be welcomed by students wanting to familiarise themselves with the work of Blake.

Alternative approaches have emerged which have radically altered our understanding of Tennyson's poetry and his relationship to the Victorian age. This text covers the most significant areas of new work on Tennyson, effectively linking feminist and gender studies with deconstructive, psychoanalytic and linguistic attention. The Introduction discusses ways in which orthodox critical approaches have dominated readings of Tennyson's poetry and provides a critical overview of the radical reappraisal of his work. It also provides a guide to the varied ways in which these new debates have shaped and are shaping themselves, with a final discussion of the future directions which Tennyson criticism is likely to take. The essays chosen cover and reflect a range of modes of critical enquiry compelling in themselves.

This collection of readings on the concept of ideology is brought together by the Marxist critic, Terry Eagleton. His introduction traces the historical evolution of ideology and examines in a more theoretical style the various meanings of the word and their significance. The readings begin with the first English translations of some of the writing of the French founder of the concept in the eighteenth century. They then move from the enlightenment to Hegel and Marxism, with particular emphasis on Marx and Engels themselves. They also look at other eighteenth-century traditions of thought such as Nietzche and Freud.All the readings are theoretical rather than examples of `ideology at work' and will be of interest to undergraduate students of cultural, political and historical studies concerned with ideology, as well as students of English literature.

Postcolonial theory is a relatively new area in critical contemporary studies, having its foundations in the study of colonial discourse, neo-colonialism and Commonwealth literature. This reader contains 13 essays focusing on colonial discourse.