The Work of Reading: Literary Criticism in the 21st Century is a sustained critical examination of the developments in the field of literary studies from the early 2000s onwards within the context of the systematic problems in the humanities. This volume analyzes the origins of the current methods-including New Historicism, empiricism, New Formalism, postcritique, and others-and posits alternatives to the present state of literary studies. At a time when many aspects of current methods show a desire to adopt values from other disciplines to solve internal crises, this volume advocates a renewed focus on questions of form by means of the praxis of aesthetic study, close reading, and other modes of engaging directly with literary texts.

This selection of critical essays offers guidance and stimulation to readers, representing some of the best accounts of the novel to have been published during the past twenty years. An introduction discusses the writing and reading of Ulysses, and conversations with Joyce about the book are also included.

Poet Thomas Carper and scholar Derek Attridge join forces in Meter and Meaning to present an illuminating and user-friendly way to explore the rhythms of poetry in English. They begin by showing the value of performing any poem aloud, so that we can sense its unique use of rhythm. From this starting point they suggest an entirely fresh, jargon-free approach to reading poetry. Illustrating their "beat/offbeat" method with a series of exercises, they help readers to appreciate the use of rhythm in poems of all periods and to understand the vital relationship between meter and meaning.
Beginning with the very basics, Meter and Meaning enables a smooth progression to an advanced knowledge of poetic rhythms. It is the essential guide to meter for anyone who wants to study, write, better appreciate, or simply enjoy poetry. Thomas Carper and Derek Attridge make studying meter a pleasure and reading poetry a revelation.

The distinguished South African scholar and critic Graham Pechey was one of the leading voices in the debates about literature's role in the apartheid state, and he continued to reflect influentially on its importance and function after the establishment of democracy. Pechey died in 2016 without putting the finishing touches on a book on South African literature and culture that had been some twenty years in the making. He wrote on a wide range of South African literature across the racial divide and across periods, combining an acute sense of the historical and geopolitical situation of South African writing with a sensitive ear to the workings of the literary; he was thus able to do justice to both the singular grain of individual works and their broad political and cultural implications. This collection brings together the most significant of these essays, organised in a way that reflects his major concerns. Topics addressed include the role of culture in the transition from apartheid to democracy, the specificity of English as a literary medium in South Africa, the freedom of the artist in an authoritarian state, and the global trajectory of South African words. Among the authors discussed are Olive Schreiner, Njabulo Ndebele, Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, William Plomer, F.T. Prince, and Roy Campbell.

If "event" is a proper name we reserve for monumental changes, crises, transitions and ruptures that are by their very nature unnameable or unthinkable, then this volume is an attempt to set up an encounter between such eventhood as it comes to have a bearing on literary works and the work of reading literature. As the event continues to provide a valuable analytical paradigm for work undertaken within the newer subdisciplines of literary and critical theory, including close reading, bio- politics, world literature, and eco- criticism, this volume makes a concerted effort to update the scholarship in this area and foreground the recent resurgence of interest in the concept. The book provides both a retrospective appraisal of the significance of events to literary studies and the literary humanities, as well as contemporary and prospective appraisals of the same, and thus would appeal scholars and instructors in the areas of literary theory, comparative literature and philosophical aesthetics alike. Along with a specialist focus on thinkers such as Derrida, Badiou, Deleuze and Malabou, the essays in this volume read a wide corpus of literature ranging from Han Kang, Homer, Renee Gladman, Proust and Flaubert to Yoruba ideophones, Browning, Anne Carson, Jenichiro Oyabe and Ben Lerner.

This book shows how rhythm constitutes an untapped resource for understanding poetry. Intervening in recent debates over formalism, historicism, and poetics, the authors show how rhythm is at once a defamiliarizing aesthetic force and an unstable concept. Distinct from the related terms to which it's often assimilated-scansion, prosody, meter-rhythm makes legible a range of ways poetry affects us that cannot be parsed through the traditional resources of poetic theory. Rhythm has rich but also problematic roots in still-lingering nineteenth-century notions of primitive, oral, communal, and sometimes racialized poetics. But there are reasons to understand and even embrace its seductions, including its resistance to lyrical voice and even identity. Through exploration of rhythm's genealogies and present critical debates, the essays consistently warn against taking rhythm to be a given form offering ready-made resources for interpretation. Pressing beyond poetry handbooks' isolated descriptions of technique or inductive declarations of what rhythm "is," the essays ask what it means to think rhythm. Rhythm, the contributors show, happens relative to the body, on the one hand, and to language, on the other-two categories that are distinct from the literary, the mode through which poetics has tended to be analyzed. Beyond articulating what rhythm does to poetry, the contributors undertake a genealogical and theoretical analysis of how rhythm as a human experience has come to be articulated through poetry and poetics. The resulting work helps us better understand poetry both on its own terms and in its continuities with other experiences and other arts. Contributors: Derek Attridge, Tom Cable, Jonathan Culler, Natalie Gerber, Ben Glaser, Virginia Jackson, Simon Jarvis, Ewan Jones, Erin Kappeler, Meredith Martin, David Nowell Smith, Yopie Prins, Haun Saussy

If "event" is a proper name we reserve for monumental changes, crises, transitions and ruptures that are by their very nature unnameable or unthinkable, then this volume is an attempt to set up an encounter between such eventhood as it comes to have a bearing on literary works and the work of reading literature. As the event continues to provide a valuable analytical paradigm for work undertaken within the newer subdisciplines of literary and critical theory, including close reading, bio- politics, world literature, and eco- criticism, this volume makes a concerted effort to update the scholarship in this area and foreground the recent resurgence of interest in the concept. The book provides both a retrospective appraisal of the significance of events to literary studies and the literary humanities, as well as contemporary and prospective appraisals of the same, and thus would appeal scholars and instructors in the areas of literary theory, comparative literature and philosophical aesthetics alike. Along with a specialist focus on thinkers such as Derrida, Badiou, Deleuze and Malabou, the essays in this volume read a wide corpus of literature ranging from Han Kang, Homer, Renee Gladman, Proust and Flaubert to Yoruba ideophones, Browning, Anne Carson, Jenichiro Oyabe and Ben Lerner.

In this first full-length study of race and colonialism in the works of James Joyce, Vincent J. Cheng argues that Joyce wrote insistently from the perspective of a colonial subject of an oppressive empire, and demonstrates how Joyce's texts constitute a significant political commentary on British imperialism in Ireland and on colonial discourses and ideologies in general. This is a groundbreaking study of the century's most internationally influential fiction writer, and of his powerful representations of the cultural dynamics of race, power, and empire.

This volume of conversation not only provides a succinct philosophical biography that highlights the wide range of Attridge's interests. It likewise foregrounds his energetic engagements with literary theory, poetics, and stylistics, as well as his reassessments of contemporary philosophy and literary ideas, specifically those pertaining to the work Jacques Derrida, James Joyce, and J. M. Coetzee. Readers will find in this book a wonderful balancing act as Attridge negotiates the dynamics between the orthodoxies of critical practice and the strategic interventions of deconstructive reading. This book, with an appendix of a chronological listing of Attridge's publications, is an accessible and provocative introduction to the ideas of one of the most brilliant critical voices and generous presences in literary studies in the Anglophone world.

First published in 1992. "Acts of Literature", compiled in close association with Derrida, brings together for the first time a number of Derrida's writings on literary texts on the question of literature. The essays discuss literary figures such as Rousseau, Mallarme, Joyce, Shakespeare and Kafka. Comprising pieces spanning Derrida's career, the collection includes a substantial new interview with him on questions of literature, deconstruction, politics, feminism and history. Derek Attridge provides an introductory essay on deconstruction and the question of literature, and offers suggestions for further reading. These essays examine the place and function of literature in Western culture. They highlight Derrida's interest in literature as a significant cultural institution and as a peculiarly challenging form of writing, with inescapable consequences for our thinking about philosophy, politics and ethics. This book should be of interest to undergraduates and academics in the field of literary theory and criticism and continental philosophy.

This book presents an innovative format for poetry criticism that its authors call "dialogical poetics." This approach shows that readings of poems, which in academic literary criticism often look like a product of settled knowledge, are in reality a continual negotiation between readers. But Derek Attridge and Henry Staten agree to rein in their own interpretive ingenuity and "minimally interpret" poems - reading them with careful regard for what the poem can be shown to actually say, in detail and as a whole, from opening to closure. Based on a series of emails, the book explores a number of topics in the reading of poetry, including historical and intellectual context, modernist difficulty, the role of criticism, and translation. This highly readable book will appeal to anyone who enjoys poetry, offering an inspiring resource for students whilst also mounting a challenge to some of the approaches to poetry currently widespread in the academy.

This book presents an innovative format for poetry criticism that its authors call "dialogical poetics." This approach shows that readings of poems, which in academic literary criticism often look like a product of settled knowledge, are in reality a continual negotiation between readers. But Derek Attridge and Henry Staten agree to rein in their own interpretive ingenuity and "minimally interpret" poems - reading them with careful regard for what the poem can be shown to actually say, in detail and as a whole, from opening to closure. Based on a series of emails, the book explores a number of topics in the reading of poetry, including historical and intellectual context, modernist difficulty, the role of criticism, and translation. This highly readable book will appeal to anyone who enjoys poetry, offering an inspiring resource for students whilst also mounting a challenge to some of the approaches to poetry currently widespread in the academy.

This volume argues that theory, far from being dead, has undergone major shifts in order to come to terms with the most urgent cultural and political questions of today. Offering an overview of theory s new directions, this groundbreaking collection includes essays on affect, biopolitics, biophilosophy, the aesthetic, and neoliberalism, as well as examinations of established areas such as subaltern studies, the postcolonial, and ethics.

Influential figures such as Agamben, Badiou, Arendt, Deleuze, Derrida and Meillassoux are examined in a range of contexts. Gathering together some of the top thinkers in the field, this volume not only speculates on the fate of theory but shows its current diversity, encouraging conversation between divergent strands. Each section places the essays in their contexts and stages a comparison between different but ultimately related ways in which key thinkers are moving beyond poststructuralism.

Contributors: Amanda Anderson, Ray Brassier, Adriana Cavarero, Eva Cherniavsky, Rey Chow, Claire Colebrook, Laurent Dubreuil, Roberto Esposito, Simon Gikandi, Martin Hagglund, Peter Hallward, Brian Massumi, Peter Osborne, Elizabeth Povinelli, William Rasch, Henry Staten, Bernard Stiegler, Eugene Thacker, Cary Wolfe, Linda Zerilli.

First published in 1988, "Peculiar Language" is now established as one of the most important discussions of the language of literature.
This thought-provoking book challenges traditional notions of literary criticism, arguing that all attempts by writers, critics and literary theorists to define the language of literature have involved self-contradiction. Through examination of key moments in literary history, Derek Attridge demonstrates that such contradictions in accounts of literary language are embedded in our cultural concept of "literature" and asserts that in order to appreciate the forces that determine the limits of literary language, we must look beyond the realm of the "literary" and embrace the wider political and social sphere. While key examples have been drawn from the Renaissance, Romanticism and the work of James Joyce, Attridge's unique application of deconstructive methods has ensured that the influence of this book has been felt across the entire field of literary studies.
Re-issued as a result of recent critical interest in the book, this edition includes a new preface by the author. Alongside his new book, "The Singularity of Literature, Peculiar Language" confirms Derek Attridge's place at the cutting-edge of contemporary critical theory.

First published in 1988, Peculiar Language is now established as one of the most important discussions of the language of literature. This thought-provoking book challenges traditional notions of literary criticism, arguing that all attempts by writers, critics and literary theorists to define the language of literature have involved self-contradiction. Through examination of key moments in literary history, Derek Attridge demonstrates that such contradictions in accounts of literary language are embedded in our cultural concept of 'literature' and asserts that in order to appreciate the forces that determine the limits of literary language, we must look beyond the realm of the 'literary' and embrace the wider political and social sphere. While key examples have been drawn from the Renaissance, Romanticism and the work of James Joyce, Attridge's unique application of deconstructive methods have ensured that the influence of this book has been felt across the entire field of literary studies. Re-issued as a result of recent critical interest in the book, this edition includes a new preface by the author.

An excellent introduction to Derrida's remarkable contribution to literary studies comprising much of Derrida's writing on writers such as Shakespeare, Mallarmé, Joyce and Kafka.

The Iliad and Beowulf provide rich sources of historical information. The novels of Henry Fielding and Henry James may be instructive in the art of moral living. Some go further and argue that Emile Zola and Harriet Beecher Stowe played a part in ameliorating the lives of those existing in harsh circumstances. However, as Derek Attridge argues in this outstanding and acclaimed book, none of these capacities is distinctive of literature. What is the singularity of literature? Do the terms "literature" and "the literary" refer to actual entities found in cultures at certain times, or are they merely expressions characteristic of such cultures? Attridge argues that this resistance to definition and reduction is not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art. Derek Attridge provides a rich new vocabulary for literature, rethinking such terms as "invention," "singularity," "otherness," "alterity," "performance" and "form." He returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues for the ethical importance of literature, demonstrating how a new understanding of the literary might be put to work in a "responsible," creative mode of reading. The Singularity of Literature is not only a major contribution to the theory of literature, but also a celebration of the extraordinary pleasure of the literary, for reader, writer, student or critic. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by the author.

Was the experience of poetry-or a cultural practice we now call poetry-continuously available across the two-and-a-half millennia from the composition of the Homeric epics to the publication of Ben Jonson's Works and the death of Shakespeare in 1616? How did the pleasure afforded by the crafting of language into memorable and moving rhythmic forms play a part in the lives of hearers and readers in Ancient Greece and Rome, Europe during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and Britain during the Renaissance? In tackling these questions, this book first examines the evidence for the performance of the Iliad and the Odyssey and of Ancient Greek lyric poetry, the impact of the invention of writing on Alexandrian verse, the performances of poetry that characterized Ancient Rome, and the private and public venues for poetic experience in Late Antiquity. It moves on to deal with medieval verse, exploring the oral traditions that spread across Europe in the vernacular languages, the place of manuscript transmission, the shift from roll to codex and from papyrus to parchment, and the changing audiences for poetry. A final part investigates the experience of poetry in the English Renaissance, from the manuscript verse of Henry VIII's court to the anthologies and collections of the late Elizabethan era. Among the topics considered in this part are the importance of the printed page, the continuing significance of manuscript circulation, the performance of poetry in pageants and progresses, and the appearance of poets on the Elizabethan stage. In tracking both continuity and change across these many centuries, the book throws fresh light on the role and importance of poetry in western culture.

Examines the way in which poetry in English makes use of rhythm. The author argues that there are three major influences which determine the verse-forms used in any language: the natural rhythm of the spoken language itself; the properties of rhythmic form; and the metrical conventions which have grown up within the literary tradition. He investigates these in order to explain the forms of English verse, and to show how rhythm and metre work as an essential part of the reader's experience of poetry.

South Africa's unique history has produced literatures in many languages, in both oral and written forms, reflecting the diversity in the cultural histories and experiences of its people. The Cambridge History offers a comprehensive, multi-authored history of South African literature in all eleven official languages (and more minor ones) of the country, produced by a team of over forty international experts, including contributors from all of the major regions and language groups of South Africa. It will provide a complete portrait of South Africa's literary production, organised as a chronological history from the oral traditions existing before colonial settlement, to the post-apartheid revision of the past. In a field marked by controversy, this volume is more fully representative than any existing account of South Africa's literary history. It will make a unique contribution to Commonwealth, international and postcolonial studies and serve as a definitive reference work for decades to come.

Was the experience of poetry-or a cultural practice we now call poetry-continuously available across the two-and-a-half millennia from the composition of the Homeric epics to the publication of Ben Jonson's Works and the death of Shakespeare in 1616? How did the pleasure afforded by the crafting of language into memorable and moving rhythmic forms play a part in the lives of hearers and readers in Ancient Greece and Rome, Europe during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and Britain during the Renaissance? In tackling these questions, this book first examines the evidence for the performance of the Iliad and the Odyssey and of Ancient Greek lyric poetry, the impact of the invention of writing on Alexandrian verse, the performances of poetry that characterized Ancient Rome, and the private and public venues for poetic experience in Late Antiquity. It moves on to deal with medieval verse, exploring the oral traditions that spread across Europe in the vernacular languages, the place of manuscript transmission, the shift from roll to codex and from papyrus to parchment, and the changing audiences for poetry. A final part investigates the experience of poetry in the English Renaissance, from the manuscript verse of Henry VIII's court to the anthologies and collections of the late Elizabethan era. Among the topics considered in this part are the importance of the printed page, the continuing significance of manuscript circulation, the performance of poetry in pageants and progresses, and the appearance of poets on the Elizabethan stage. In tracking both continuity and change across these many centuries, the book throws fresh light on the role and importance of poetry in western culture.

Semicolonial Joyce is the first collection of essays to address the importance of Ireland's colonial situation in understanding the work of James Joyce. The volume reflects the ambivalences in Joyce's relationship with Irish nationalism, bringing together leading commentators on a topic that has attracted growing interest in recent years. The contributions both draw on and question the achievements of postcolonial theory, presenting a range of voices rather than a single position, and provide fresh insights into Joyce's resourceful engagement with political issues that remain highly topical today.

Joyce Effects is a collection of essays by a leading commentator on James Joyce. Joyce's books, Derek Attridge argues, go off like fireworks, and one of this book's aims is to enhance the reader's enjoyment of these special effects. He examines the way Joyce's writing challenges and transforms our understanding of language, literature, and history and offers in-depth analysis of Joyce's major works. This collection represents fifteen years of close engagement with Joyce by Derek Attridge and reflects the changing course of Joyce criticism during this period.

Joyce Effects is a collection of essays by a leading commentator on James Joyce. Joyce's books, Derek Attridge argues, go off like fireworks, and one of this book's aims is to enhance the reader's enjoyment of these special effects. He examines the way Joyce's writing challenges and transforms our understanding of language, literature, and history and offers in-depth analysis of Joyce's major works. This collection represents fifteen years of close engagement with Joyce by Derek Attridge and reflects the changing course of Joyce criticism during this period.