Books in the Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature series

Unlike the rigidly chronological approach of many introductions to children's literature, this title presents a genre-based approach which ensures that all the principal genres are covered in detail such as: fables, fantasy, adventure stories, moral tales, family stories, school stories and children's poetry.

Introduces students to a wide range of modernist writers and critical debates in modernism studies

Offers close readings of Middle English texts placed within the culture with which they interact.

Featuring a wide range of authors - from canonical figures such as Philip Roth, Don DeLillo and Annie Proulx, to increasingly influential writers such as Jeffrey Eugenides, Gish Jen and Richard Powers - the book combines detailed readings of key texts with informative discussions of their historical, social and cultural contexts.

This book explores the development of contemporary theatre in the United States in its historical, political and theoretical dimensions. It focuses on representative plays and performance texts from the 1940s to the present that experiment with both form and content.

Introduces postcolonial literary studies through close readings of a wide range of fiction and poetryThis guide places the literary works themselves at the centre of its discussions, examining how writers from Africa, Australasia, the Caribbean, Canada, Ireland, and South Asia have engaged with the challenges that beset postcolonial societies. Dave Gunning discusses many of the most-studied works of postcolonial literature, from Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart to Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, as well as works by more recent writers like Chris Abani, Tahmima Anam and Shani Mootoo. Each chapter explores a key theme through drawing together works from various times and places. The book concludes with an extensive guide to further reading and tips on how to write about postcolonial literature successfully.Key FeaturesClose analysis of texts including, Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners, J.M Coetzee's Disgrace, Roddy Doyle's A Star Called Henry, Shani Mootoo's Cereus Blooms at Night, Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Tahmima Anam's A Golden Age, Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost, and Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land, as well as poetry by Derek Walcott, Eavan Boland, Agha Shahid Ali, Chris Abani and others.Discusses important new themes in postcolonial literature including global Islam, postcolonial sexualities and the representation of military conflict.Includes a Chronology, a Guide to Further Reading, and Tips on Writing about Postcolonial Literature.

This guide combines detailed literary history with discussion of contemporary debates about Scottishness. The book considers the rise of Scottish Studies, the development of a national literature, and issues of cultural nationalism. Beginning in the medieval period during a time of nation building, the book goes on to focus on the 'Scots revival' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before moving on to discuss the literary renaissance of the twentieth century. Debates concerning Celticism and Gaelic take place alongside discussion of key Scottish writers such as William Dunbar, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Margaret Oliphant, Hugh MacDiarmid, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway and Liz Lochhead. The book also considers emigre writers to Scotland; Scottish literature in relation to England, the United States and Ireland; and postcolonialism and other theories that shed fresh light on the current status and future of Scottish literature.Key Features*Identifies the main trends in the emergence and development of Scottish literature, situating them in historical and cultural context*Discusses long-running debates about Scottish language and national identity through detailed readings of authors and texts*Introduces students to a variety of comparative and theoretical approaches which further develop an understanding of Scottish literature*Encourages reflection on questions of Scottish nationalism, cultural politics, canonicity and the rise of Scottish Studies

A comprehensive introduction to the diverse English literature of this period this book examines the way in which social, intellectual and literary changes interacted. Taking major social change as its starting point, the guide explores how all genres of literary discourse were changed and opened up by new methods of serialisation, the increasing complexity of new contexts of consumption, and a pervasive culture of performance. The book offers essential readings of the work of canonical authors, while situating their writing in relation to writers whose work is stimulating new critical attention. The book opens with a chronology and an introduction that explores problems of locating and understanding the period. There are chapters on: the novel; theatricality; poetry; Victorian cultural criticism; and the relationship between the fin de sicle and the present. These chapters introduce key critical concepts such as 'realism', genres such as the dramatic monologue and 'sensation fiction', and areas of debate such as the relationship between science and literature, and women and writing. The detailed readings foreground regularly taught authors of fiction such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins and Bram Stoker; and poets such as Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti. Key Features*A single, comprehensive and accessible undergraduate introduction to Victorian literature*A coherent yet complex narrative of literary changes and developments*A fresh and accessible introductory account of literary trends from 1830-1900*Essential resources and further reading highlighted*Promotes informed engagement with the canon and current critical debates and establishes pathways towards further reading and lesser-known authors

An incisive study of modern American literature, casting new light on its origins and themes.Exploring canonical American writers such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner alongside less familiar writers like Djuna Barnes and Susan Glaspell, the guide takes readers though a diverse literary landscape. It considers how the rise of the American metropolis contributed to the growth of American modernism; and also examines the ways in which regional writers responded to an accelerated American modernity. Taking in African American modernism, cultural and geographical exile, as well as developments in modern American drama, the guide introduces readers to current critical trends in modernist studies. Key FeaturesPresents American literary modernism as emerging from a broad intellectual and philosophical landscapeExtends the timeframe, definition and intellectual parameters of American modernismProvides close critical and contextual analysis of more than thirty American writers and key texts including Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Djuna Barnes's Nightwood, and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land

This critical guide introduces major novelists and themes in British fiction from 1975 to 2005. It engages with concepts such as postmodernism, feminism, gender and the postcolonial, and examines the place of fiction within broader debates in contemporary culture.A comprehensive Introduction provides a historical context for the study of contemporary British fiction by detailing significant social, political and cultural events. This is followed by five chapters organised around the core themes: (1) Narrative Forms, (2) Contemporary Ethnicities, (3) Gender and Sexuality, (4) History, Memory and Writing, and (5) Narratives of Cultural Space.

An important critical study of Canadian literature, placing internationally successful anglophone Canadian authors in the context of their national literary history. While the focus of the book is on twentieth-century and contemporary writing, it also charts the historical development of Canadian literature and discusses important eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors. The chapters focus on four central topics in Canadian culture: Ethnicity, Race, Colonisation; Wildernesses, Cities, Regions; Desire; and Histories and Stories. Each chapter combines case studies of five key texts with a broad discussion of concepts and approaches, including postcolonial and postmodern reading strategies and theories of space, place and desire. Authors chosen for close analysis include Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro, Leonard Cohen, Thomas King and Carol Shields.

Discussing the work of more than 60 poets from the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and the Caribbean, Nerys Williams guides students through the key ideas and movements in the study of poetry today.