Beschreibung

Sweeping across two millennia and every literary genre, acclaimed scholar and biographer Jonathan Bate provides a dazzling introduction to English Literature. The focus is wide, shifting from the birth of the novel and the brilliance of English comedy to the deep Englishness of landscape poetry and the ethnic diversity of Britain's Nobel literature laureates. It goes on to provide a more in-depth analysis, with close readings from an extraordinary scene in King Lear to a war poem by
Carol Ann Duffy, and a series of striking examples of how literary texts change as they are transmitted from writer to reader.
The narrative embraces not only the major literary movements such as Romanticism and Modernism, together with the most influential authors including Chaucer, Donne, Johnson, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens and Woolf, but also little-known stories such as the identity of the first English woman poet to be honoured with a collected edition of her works. Written with the flair and passion for which Jonathan Bate has become renowned, this book is the perfect Very Short Introduction for all
readers and students of the incomparable literary heritage of these islands.

Inhaltsangabe

From the contents:
1: Once upon a time; 2: What it is; 3: When it began; 4: The study of English; 5: Periods and movements; 6: Among the English Poets; 7: Shakespeare and dramatic literature; 8: Aspects of the English novel; 9: The Englishness of English literature; Further Reading

Klappentext

English Literature: A Very Short Introduction discusses why literature matters, how narrative works, and what is distinctly English about English literature. Jonathan Bate considers how we determine the content of the field, and looks at the three major kinds of imaginative literature - English poetry, English drama and The English novel.