Key Features: Study methods Introduction to the text Summaries with critical notes Themes and techniques Textual analysis of key passages Author biography Historical and literary background Modern and historical critical approaches Chronology Glossary of literary terms

Building on the formula of York Notes, this Advanced series introduces students to more sophisticated analysis and wider critical perspectives. The notes enable students to appreciate contrasting interpretations of the text and to develop their own critical thinking. Key features include: study methods; an introduction to the text; summaries with critical notes; themes and techniques; textual analysis of key passages; author biography; historical and literary background; modern and historical critical approaches; chronology; and glossary of literary terms.

New historicism and cultural materialism emerged in the early 1980s as prominent literary theories and came to represent a revival of interest in history and in historicising literature. Their proponents rejected both formalist criticism and earlier attempts to read literature in its historical context and defined new ways of thinking about literature in relation to history. This study explains the development of these theories and demonstrates both their uses and weaknesses as critical practices. The potential future direction for the theories is explored and the controversial debates about their validity in literary studies are discussed.

This comprehensive critical survey introduces readers to the principal themes and styles of literature in England since 1945. John Brannigan examines the complex nature of the relationship between literature and history, society, and place, and argues that postwar literature is especially concerned with themes of social and cultural change. Covering drama, fiction and poetry, this book combines original readings of a wide range of familiar texts with an exploration of the historical and cultural context of literature since World War II.

This book provides a comprehensive account and critical analysis of the literary career of Pat Barker. It offers readings of Barker's innovations in narrative form, her revisionist perspectives on history, class and gender, and her preoccupation with themes of trauma, haunting and terror. It also analyses the reasons for her success and significance as a novelist. The chapters draw on contemporary theories of critical realism, gender and social identities, memory and narrative, in order to outline the debates with which Barker's work has consistently engaged. Brannigan argues that Barker is one of the most important writers in modern English literary history. She is principally renowned and widely acclaimed for her 'Regeneration' trilogy, the last volume of which, 'The Ghost Road', won the Booker Prize in 1995. In recent novels, Barker has continued to deal with controversial and shocking themes, including child murderers and the meanings of 'terror' in the contemporary world. -- .

"Poverty is what I am writing about". In the late 1920s, Eric Blair resigned his post as a colonial policeman in Burma, immersed himself in the slums of Paris and London, and reinvented himself as George Orwell, one of the most revered prose stylists in the English language. Orwell decided to write about the lives of the poor - the dishwashers of Paris, the tramps of London - not by imagining poverty, but by experiencing poverty. The result is a book which is as provocative and incisive about class inequalities, homelessness, and social prejudices today as it was when it was first published in 1933. Down and Out in Paris and London was George Orwell's first book, and it remains a masterpiece of prose writing. This edition is accompanied by an introduction which examines Orwell's book for its literary, social, and political significance. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

This book offers a new archipelagic history of 20th-century literature in Britain and Ireland. Archipelagic Modernism examines the anglophone literatures of the archipelago from 1890 to 1970 for what they tell us about changing identities, geographies, and ecologies. The book argues that these literatures constitute an important resource for how we might begin to think about alternative political geographies, and alternative practices of belonging to place and environment. From the height of the British Empire in 1890, to the increasing sense by 1970 of the imminent 'break-up' of Britain, 'archipelagic modernism' turned to the 'peripheral' spaces of islands, coastlines, and the sea to re-invent the Irish and British archipelago as a plural and connective space. It questions established terms such as 'Modernism' or 'the Angry Young Men' and explores new terms such as 'critical realism' and literary developments such as 'the Scottish New Wave'. Divided into 2 historical parts, 12 chapters take readers progressively from 'Edwardian Idylls' to 'Contemporary Women's Writing'. It takes the study of 20th-century literature into the 21st century providing a single volume treatment of the distinct national literary traditions of the British Isles. It provides students with a provocative revisionist approach and in-depth coverage.

In this study, John Brannigan explains the development of new historicism and cultural materialism and demonstrates both their uses and weaknesses as critical practices. Exemplary readings of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson and Yeats' Easter 1916 serve to show and criticize the new historicist and cultural materialist interpretative strategies. Brannigan explores the potential future of the theories and the debates surrounding their controversial position in literary studies.