This text offers a unique combination of British, European, American and Post-Colonial perspectives on literary study from the 1920s to the present day. Carefully introduced and arranged to highlight the development of debates, it is designed to engage newcomers to the field with some of the main themes and issues that will concern them as readers of modern literary texts of all genres. The book provides material that is exciting, original, and above all accessible, rather than simply representative of a certain critical approach. It includes the views of leading critics such as Terry Eagleton, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Umberto Eco and Paul de Man, as well as the originating voices of writers such as Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Paul Sartre, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie. In the second edition, there is an increased focus on questions of gender and identity and on recent debates, such as 'Literature and Nation' and 'Literature and Value'. The reach and relevance of the book has been extended, taking a more international voice, focusing on American and European writers and critics.

Table of Contents

General Introduction; PART ONE: GENERAL APPROACHES; I QUESTIONING THE CANON; Introduction; 1. Repossessing the Past: The Case for an Open Literary History; 2. Canon and Period; 3. Literature and the Rise of English; 4. Women Poets; 5. Literary Theory and the Black Tradition; II INTERPRETATION; Introduction; 1. The Babel of Interpretations; 2. Interpreting the Variorium; 3. Who Cares About the Text?; 4. Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory; 5. The Interpreter's Freud; III COMMITMENT; Introduction; 1. To Cambridge Women; 2. Writing, Reading, and the Public; 3. Commitment; 4. Right and Wrong Political Uses of Literature; PART TWO: THEMES AND ISSUES; I FORM AND GENRE; Introduction; 1. Story and Narrative; 2. Semiotics of Theatrical Performance; 3. The Signs of Drama; Close Reading; II MODERNISMS; Introduction; 1. Remarks on Poetry; 2. Order in Narrative; 3. Towards a Semiotics of Literature; 4. The Ideology of Modernism; 5. Modernism and the Metropolis; 6. Gender and Modernism; III LITERATURE AND NATION; Introduction; 1. Beyond a Boundary; 2. Woman and Nationalism; 3. The Intimate Enemy; 4. The National Longing for Form; 5. Imaginary Homelands; IV LITERATURE AND IDEOLOGY; Introduction; 1. A Short Organum for the Theatre; 2. Marxist Criticism; 3. The Text Says What It Does Not Say; 4. The Death of the Author; 5. What is an Author?; V LITERATURE AND GENDER; Introduction; 1. Woman and the Other; 2. Language and Gender; 3. Laugh of the Medusa; 4. Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation; 5. Introduction to Between Men; 6. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire; VI END OF EMPIRE; Introduction; 1. The Discourse of the Orient; 2. Englands of the Mind; 3. Behind the Cliches of Contemporary Theatre; 4. From the Victorian Nyanza to the Sheraton San Salvador; VII FROM COMMONWEALTH TO POST-COLONIAL; Introduction; 1. On National Culture; 2. Colonialist Criticism; 3. History of the Voice; 4. Post-Colonial Reconstruction; 5. The Angel of Progress; 6. When Was The Post-Colonial?; VIII LITERATURE AND HISTORY; Introduction; 1. Theses on the Philosophy of History; 2. History and Fiction; 3. Introduction to Metahistory; 4. The Text, the Poem, and the Problem of Historical Method; 5. The Keening Muse; 6. The Hollow Miracle; 7. Literary History and Literary Modernity; IX LITERATURE AND VALUE; Introduction; 1. What is a Classic; 2. The Exile of Evaluation

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