Literary Studies

Literary Studies: A Practical Guide provides a comprehensive foundation for the study of English, American, and world literatures, giving students the critical skills they need to best develop and apply their knowledge. Designed for use in a range of literature courses, it begins by outlining the history of literary movements, enabling students to contextualize a given work within its cultural and historical moment. Specific focus is then given to the use of literary theory and the analysis of: Poetry Prose fiction and novels Plays Films. A detailed unit provides clear and concise introductions to literary criticism and theory, encouraging students to nurture their unique insights into a range of texts with these critical tools. Finally, students are guided through the process of generating ideas for essays, considering the role of secondary criticism in their writing, and formulating literary arguments. This practical volume is an invaluable resource for students, providing them with the tools to succeed in any English course.

An Introduction to Literary Studies provides the beginner with an accessible and comprehensive survey of literature. Systematically taking in theory, genre and literary history, Klarer provides easy to understand descriptions of a variety of approaches to texts. This invaluable guide includes sections on: fiction poetry drama film covering: a range of theoretical approaches an extensive glossary of major literary and cinematic terms guidelines for writing research papers.

Literary Studies provides students with an accessible overview of everything they need to know to succeed in their English coursesÑliterary terms, historical periods, theoretical approaches, and more. The guide helps students gain the analytical skills that will benefit them in college and as educated citizens after graduation.

Following the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences, Spatial Literary Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Space, Geography, and the Imagination offers a wide range of essays that reframe or transform contemporary criticism by focusing attention, in various ways, on the dynamic relations among space, place, and literature. These essays reflect upon the representation of space and place, whether in the real world, in imaginary universes, or in those hybrid zones where fiction meets reality. Working within or alongside related approaches, such as geocriticism, literary geography, and the spatial humanities, these essays examine the relationship between literary spatiality and different genres or media, such as film or television. The contributors to Spatial Literary Studies draw upon diverse critical and theoretical traditions in disclosing, analyzing, and exploring the significance of space, place, and mapping in literature and in the world, thus making new textual geographies and literary cartographies possible.

Aristotle's Poetics has held the attention of scholars and authors through the ages, and Averroes has long been known as "the commentator" on Aristotle. His Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics is important because of its striking content. Here, an author steeped in Aristotle's thought and highly familiar with an entirely different poetical tradition shows in careful detail what is commendable about Greek poetics and commendable as well as blameworthy about Arabic poetics.

The essays in Hypermedia and Literary Studies discuss the theoretical and practical opportunities and challenges posed by the convergence of hypermedia systems and traditional written texts.Consider a work from Shakespeare. Imagine, as you read it, being able to call up instantly the Elizabethan usage of a particular word, variant texts for any part of the work, critical commentary, historically relevant facts, or oral interpretations by different sets of actors. This is the sort of richly interconnected, immediately accessible literary universe that can be created by hypertext (electronically linked texts) and hypermedia (the extension of linkages to visual and aural material). The essays in Hypermedia and Literary Studies discuss the theoretical and practical opportunities and challenges posed by the convergence of hypermedia systems and traditional written texts. They range from the theory and design of literary hypermedia to reports of actual hypermedia projects from secondary school to university and from educational and scholarly to creative applications in poetry and fiction.ContentsHypertext, Hypermedia, and Literary Studies - Theory - Reading and Writing the Electronic Book - From Electronic Books to Electronic Libraries: Revisiting Reading and Writing the Electronic Book. - The Rhetoric of Hypermedia: Some Rules for Authors - Topographic Writing: Hypertext and the Electronic Writing Space - Reading from the Map: Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of Forking Paths. - Poem Descending a Staircase: Hypertext and the Simultaneity of Experience - Reading Hypertext: Order and Coherence in a New Medium - Threnody: Psychoanalytic Digressions on the Subject of Hypertexts - Applications - Biblical Studies and Hypertext - Ancient Materials, Modern Media: Shaping the Study of Classics with Hypertext - Linking Together Books: Adapting Published Material into Intermedia Documents - The Shakespeare Project - The Emblematic Hyperbook - HyperCard Stacks for Fielding's Joseph Andrews: Issues of Design and Content - Hypertext for the PC: The Rubén Dario Project - Hypermedia in Schools

Public Scholarship in Literary Studies demonstrates that literary criticism has the potential not only to explain, but to actively change our terms of engagement with current realities. Rachel Arteaga and Rosemary Johnsen bring together accomplished public scholars who make significant contributions to literary scholarship, teaching, and the public good. The volume begins with essays by scholars who write regularly for large public audiences in primarily digital venues, then moves to accounts of research-based teaching and engagement in public contexts, and finally turns to important new models for cross-institutional partnerships and campus-community engagement. Grounded in scholarship and written in an accessible style, Public Scholarship in Literary Studies will appeal to scholars in and outside the academy, students, and those interested in the public humanities. "There are books of literary criticism that attempt to reach crossover audiences but none that take this particular public-humanities-focused-on-literary criticism perspective."—Kathryn Temple, Georgetown University Contributions by Rachel Arteaga, Christine Chaney, Jim Cocola, Daniel Coleman, Christopher Douglas, Gary Handwerk, Cynthia L. Haven, Rosemary Erickson Johnsen, Anu Taranath, Carmaletta M. Williams, and Lorraine York.

Over the last few decades, character-based criticism has been seen as either naive or obsolete. But now questions of character are attracting renewed interest. Making the case for a broad-based revision of our understanding of character, Character rethinks these questions from the ground up. Is it really necessary to remind literary critics that characters are made up of words? Must we forbid identification with characters? Does character-discussion force critics to embrace humanism and outmoded theories of the subject? Across three chapters, leading scholars Amanda Anderson, Rita Felski, and Toril Moi reimagine and renew literary studies by engaging in a conversation about character. Moi returns to the fundamental theoretical assumptions that convinced literary scholars to stop doing character-criticism, and shows that they cannot hold. Felski turns to the question of identification and draws out its diverse strands, as well as its persistence in academic criticism. Anderson shows that character-criticism illuminates both the moral life of characters, and our understanding of literary form. In offering new perspectives on the question of fictional character, this thought-provoking book makes an important intervention in literary studies.

A comprehensive overview into digital literary studies that equips readers to navigate the difficult contentions in this space. The Literary Agenda is a series of short polemical monographs about the importance of literature and of reading in the wider world and about the state of literary education inside schools and universities. The category of 'the literary' has always been contentious. What is clear, however, is how increasingly it is dismissed or is unrecognised as a way of thinking or an arena for thought. It is sceptically challenged from within, for example, by the sometimes rival claims of cultural history, contextualized explanation, or media studies. It is shaken from without by even greater pressures: by economic exigency and the severe social attitudes that can follow from it; by technological change that may leave the traditional forms of serious human communication looking merely antiquated. For just these reasons this is the right time for renewal, to start reinvigorated work into the meaning and value of literary reading. You may have heard of the digital humanities--and what you may have heard may not have been good. Yet like an oncoming storm, the relentless growth of the use of digital methods for the study of literature seems inevitable. This book gives an insight into the ways in which digital approaches can be used to study literature and the ways in which humanistic study can be used to explore digital literature. Examining its subject across the axes of authorship, space, and visualization, maps and place, distance and history, and ethical approaches to the digital humanities, this book introduces newcomers to the topic while also offering plenty for seasoned digital humanities pros. Combining original research with third-party case studies and examples, this book will appeal both to students and researchers across all levels who wish to learn about digital literary studies.