Music- and style-centred youth cultures are now a familiar aspect of everyday life in countries as far apart around the globe as Nepal and Jamaica, Hong Kong and Israel, Denmark and Australia. This lucid and original text provides a lively and wide-ranging account of the relationship between popular music and youth culture within the context of debates about the spatial dimensions of identity. It begins with a clear and comprehensive survey, and critical evaluation, of the existing body of literature on youth culture and popular music developed by sociologists and cultural and media theorists. It then develops a fresh perspective on the ways in which popular music is appropriated as a cultural resource by young people, using as a springboard a series of original ethnographic studies of dance music, rap, bhangra and rock. Bennett's original research material is carefully contextualised within a wider international literature on youth styles, local spaces and popular music but it serves to illustrate graphically how styles of music and their attendant stylistic innovations are appropriated and `lived out' by young people in particular social spaces. Music, Bennett argues, is produced and consumed by young people in ways that both inform their sense of self and also serve to construct the social world in which their identities operate. With its comprehensive coverage of youth and music studies and its important new insights, Popular Music and Youth Culture is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students in sociology, cultural studies, media studies and popular music studies. Dr ANDY BENNETT is lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He has published articles on aspects of youth culture, popular music, local identity and music and ethnicity in a number of journals, including Sociological Review, Media Culture and Society and Popular Music. He is currently co-editing a book on guitar cultures.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. George Orwell's modern fable on the way power corrupts is as apt as ever in the twenty-first century. Educational edition of this much-loved classic from Longman.

What is this thing called literature? Why study it? And how? Relating literature to topics such as dreams, politics, life, death, the ordinary and the uncanny, This Thing Called Literature establishes a sense of why and how literature is an exciting and rewarding subject to study. Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle expertly weave an essential love of literature into an account of what literary texts do, how they work and the sort of questions and ideas they provoke. The book’s three parts reflect the fundamental components of studying literature: reading, thinking and writing. The authors use helpful and wide-ranging examples and summaries, offering rich reflections on the question ‘What is literature?’ and on what they term ‘creative reading’. The new edition has been revised throughout with extensive updates to the further reading, and a new chapter on creative non-fiction. Bennett and Royle’s accessible and thought-provoking style encourages a deep engagement with literary texts. This essential guide to the study of literature is as an eloquent celebration of the value and pleasure of reading.

Hairdresser Rita feels that life is passing her by. She wants an education. But does Frank have anything to teach her? Willy Russell's play gives a hilarious - and often moving - account of a young woman's determination to change her life.

Lively, original and highly readable, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory is the essential guide to literary studies. Starting at 'The Beginning' and concluding with 'The End', chapters range from the familiar, such as 'Character', 'Narrative' and 'The Author', to the more unusual, such as 'Secrets', 'Pleasure' and 'Ghosts'. Now in its sixth edition, Bennett and Royle's classic textbook successfully illuminates complex ideas by engaging directly with literary works, so that a reading of Jane Eyre opens up ways of thinking about racial difference, for example, while Chaucer, Raymond Chandler and Monty Python are all invoked in a discussion of literature and laughter. The sixth edition has been revised and updated throughout. In addition, four new chapters - 'Literature', 'Loss', 'Human' and 'Migrant' - engage with exciting recent developments in literary studies. As well as fully up-to-date further reading sections at the end of each chapter, the book contains a comprehensive bibliography and an invaluable glossary of key literary terms. A breath of fresh air in a field that can often seem dry and dauntingly theoretical, this book will open the reader's eyes to the exhilarating possibilities of reading and studying literature.

What is this thing called literature? Why study it? And how? Relating literature to topics such as dreams, politics, life, death, the ordinary and the uncanny, This Thing Called Literature establishes a sense of why and how literature is an exciting and rewarding subject to study. Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle expertly weave an essential love of literature into an account of what literary texts do, how they work and the sort of questions and ideas they provoke. The book’s three parts reflect the fundamental components of studying literature: reading, thinking and writing. The authors use helpful and wide-ranging examples and summaries, offering rich reflections on the question ‘What is literature?’ and on what they term ‘creative reading’. The new edition has been revised throughout with extensive updates to the further reading, and a new chapter on creative non-fiction. Bennett and Royle’s accessible and thought-provoking style encourages a deep engagement with literary texts. This essential guide to the study of literature is as an eloquent celebration of the value and pleasure of reading.

Andrew Bennett challenges the popular conception of Wordsworth as a writer who didn't so much write poetry as compose it aloud or in his head (usually while walking, and preferably while ascending mountains). The act and idea of writing is in fact central to the themes and to the rhetorical texture of Wordsworth's poetry. This wide-ranging study considers various aspects of Wordsworth's compositional practice, including questions of revision and dictation, of monumental inscription and graffiti, of talking and thinking, and of the poet's own theory of composition, and examines the implications of a critical tradition that erroneously assumes that Wordsworth employed exclusively 'oral' modes of composition. For Wordsworth, acts of writing were important dimensions of his poetry and indeed of his sense of personal and poetic identity. Bennett contends that a sustained attention to the question of writing in Wordsworth produces compelling new readings of the major poems.

Andrew Bennett's original study of Keats focuses on questions of narrative and audience as a means to offer new readings of the major poems. It discusses ways in which reading is 'figured' in Keats's poetry, and suggests that such 'figures of reading' have themselves determined certain modes of response to Keats's texts. Together with important new readings of Keats's poetry, the study presents a significant rethinking of the relationship between Romantic poetry and its audience. Developing recent discussions in literary theory concerning narrative, readers and reading, the nature of the audience for poetry, and the Romantic 'invention' of posterity, Bennett elaborates a sophisticated and historically specific reconceptualization of Romantic writing.

Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, this tale is linked in its poignancy and humour to Lord the the Flies. This edition is part of a series of pre- and post-1914 works chosen especially for 14-18 year olds. The series features fiction, anthologies, poetry, plays and non-fiction.

This study argues that ignorance is a part of the narrative and poetic force of literature and is an important aspect of its thematic focus: ignorance is what literary texts are about. It sees that the dominant conception of literature since the Romantic period involves an often unacknowledged engagement with the experience of not knowing. From Wordsworth and Keats to George Eliot and Charles Dickens, from Henry James to Joseph Conrad, from Elizabeth Bowen to Philip Roth and Seamus Heaney, writers have been fascinated and compelled by the question of ignorance, including their own. There is a politics and ethics as well as a poetics of ignorance: literature's agnoiology, its acknowledgement of the limits of what we know both of ourselves and of others, engages with the possibility of democracy and the ethical, and allows us to begin to conceive of what it might mean to be human. Now available in paperback, this exciting approach to literary theory will be of interest to lecturers and students of literary theory and criticism. -- .

This is a collection of nine short stories by one of Britain's best-loved writers. This edition is part of a series of pre- and post-1914 works chosen especially for 14-18 year olds. The series features fiction, anthologies, poetry, plays and non-fiction.

Andrew Bennett argues in this fascinating book that ignorance is part of the narrative and poetic force of literature and is an important aspect of its thematic focus: ignorance is what literary texts are about. He sees that the dominant conception of literature since the Romantic period involves an often unacknowledged engagement with the experience of not knowing. From Wordsworth and Keats to George Eliot and Charles Dickens, from Henry James to Joseph Conrad, from Elizabeth Bowen to Philip Roth and Seamus Heaney, writers have been fascinated and compelled by the question of ignorance, including their own. Bennett argues that there is a politics and ethics as well as a poetics of ignorance: literature's agnoiology, its acknowledgement of the limits of what we know both of ourselves and of others, engages with the possibility of democracy and the ethical, and allows us to begin to conceive of what it might mean to be human. This exciting approach to literary theory will be of interest to lecturers and students of literary theory and criticism. -- .

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 volume investigates the changing definitions of the author, what it has meant historically to be an 'author', and the impact that this has had on literary culture. Andrew Bennett presents a clearly-structured discussion of the various theoretical debates surrounding authorship, exploring such concepts as authority, ownership, originality, and the 'death' of the author. Accessible, yet stimulating, this study offers the ideal introduction to a core notion in critical theory.

This volume investigates the changing definitions of the author, what it has meant historically to be an 'author', and the impact that this has had on literary culture. Andrew Bennett presents a clearly-structured discussion of the various theoretical debates surrounding authorship, exploring such concepts as authority, ownership, originality, and the 'death' of the author. Accessible, yet stimulating, this study offers the ideal introduction to a core notion in critical theory.

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.

Lively, original and highly readable, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory is the essential guide to literary studies. Starting at 'The Beginning' and concluding with 'The End', chapters range from the familiar, such as 'Character', 'Narrative' and 'The Author', to the more unusual, such as 'Secrets', 'Pleasure' and 'Ghosts'. Now in its sixth edition, Bennett and Royle's classic textbook successfully illuminates complex ideas by engaging directly with literary works, so that a reading of Jane Eyre opens up ways of thinking about racial difference, for example, while Chaucer, Raymond Chandler and Monty Python are all invoked in a discussion of literature and laughter. The sixth edition has been revised and updated throughout. In addition, four new chapters - 'Literature', 'Loss', 'Human' and 'Migrant' - engage with exciting recent developments in literary studies. As well as fully up-to-date further reading sections at the end of each chapter, the book contains a comprehensive bibliography and an invaluable glossary of key literary terms. A breath of fresh air in a field that can often seem dry and dauntingly theoretical, this book will open the reader's eyes to the exhilarating possibilities of reading and studying literature.

Suicide Century investigates suicide as a prominent theme in twentieth-century and contemporary literature. Andrew Bennett argues that with the waning of religious and legal prohibitions on suicide in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the increasing influence of medical and sociological accounts of its causes and significance in the twentieth century, literature responds to the act and idea as an increasingly normalised but incessantly baffling phenomenon. Discussing works by a number of major authors from the long twentieth century, the book explores the way that suicide makes and unmakes subjects, assumes and disrupts meaning, induces and resists empathy, and insists on and makes inconceivable our understanding of ourselves and of others.

William Wordsworth's poetry responded to the enormous literary, political, cultural, technological and social changes that the poet lived through during his lifetime (1770-1850), and to his own transformation from young radical inspired by the French Revolution to Poet Laureate and supporter of the establishment. The poet of the 'egotistical sublime' who wrote the pioneering autobiographical masterpiece, The Prelude, and whose work is remarkable for its investigation of personal impressions, memories and experiences, is also the poet who is critically engaged with the cultural and political developments of his era. William Wordsworth in Context presents thirty-five concise chapters on contexts crucial for an understanding and appreciation of this leading Romantic poet. It focuses on his life, circle, and composition; on his reception and influence; on the significance of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century literary contexts; and on the historical, political, scientific and philosophical issues that helped to shape Wordsworth's poetry and prose.

Advances in qualitative methods and recent developments in the philosophy of science have led to an emphasis on explanation via reference to causal mechanisms. This book argues that the method known as process tracing is particularly well suited to developing and assessing theories about such mechanisms. The editors begin by establishing a philosophical basis for process tracing - one that captures mainstream uses while simultaneously being open to applications by interpretive scholars. Equally important, they go on to establish best practices for individual process-tracing accounts - how micro to go, when to start (and stop), and how to deal with the problem of equifinality. The contributors then explore the application of process tracing across a range of subfields and theories in political science. This is an applied methods book which seeks to shrink the gap between the broad assertion that 'process tracing is good' and the precise claim 'this is an instance of good process tracing'.

This 1999 book examines the way in which the Romantic period's culture of posterity inaugurates a tradition of writing which demands that the poet should write for an audience of the future: the true poet, a figure of neglected genius, can be properly appreciated only after death. Andrew Bennett argues that this involves a radical shift in the conceptualization of the poet and poetic reception, with wide-ranging implications for the poetry and poetics of the Romantic period. He surveys the contexts for this transformation of the relationship between poet and audience, engaging with issues such as the commercialization of poetry, the gendering of the canon, and the construction of poetic identity. Bennett goes on to discuss the strangely compelling effects which this reception theory produces in the work of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron, who have come to embody, for posterity, the figure of the Romantic poet.