A Beginner's Guide to Critical Reading: An Anthology of Literary Texts

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Psychology Press, 2001 - Literary Criticism - 481 pages

A Beginner's Guide to Critical Reading brings literature to life by combining a rich selection of literary texts with original and lively commentary. Unlike so many introductions to literary studies, it vividly demonstrates how criticism and theory can enhance your own enjoyment and appreciation of literature.
Aimed at AS, A2 and undergraduate students, Richard Jacobs draws a map of English Literature which is fresh and distinctive and which offers guidance to many familiar landmarks. In the process he shows that studying literature can be a source of huge pleasure and interest.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION
xi
Wyatts they flee from me sexual politics and metrical history
6
Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice framing the outsiders
13
Shakespeares Troilus and Cressida men reading and writing a woman
20
Shakespeares sonnets courtly patronage and the homoerotic
32
Miltons Paradise Lost republican politics and the canon
46
Marvell Winstanley Milton gardens communes and losing Paradise
78
Swifts Gullivers Travels colonialism and Eden lost again
121
Carrolls alice books remembering the lovegift
268
Wildes The Happy Prince sex and politics in the fairytale
284
Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper the womans body hysteria intertextuality
300
Jamess The Turn of the Screw desire in loss and the readerresponse
322
Conrads The Secret Agent journeying into political vision
356
Greens Living the working class in modernism and the search for the father
371
Rhyss Good Morning Midnight women in colonialism and framed in exhibition
392
Williamss drama realism in the theatre policing the allowable on stage and in film
410

Johnson and others Toryism the slavetrade poverty being and reading a character
147
Wordsworths poems of boyhood myths of initiation in revolutionary times
169
Brontes Wuthering Heights Threevolume novels centres and loss
179
Melvilles Bartleby the crisis of interpretation
204
Dickinsons Poems women writing the inexpressible
238
Dickenss Our Mutual Friend between men education and law
245
Hills september Song the modern poet in history the poems right to exist
443
Becketts Not I challenging the audience with a life lost
450
Bishops and Berrymans poems how to lose and loss in this book
464
Ovids Echo And Narcissus a new translation of Metamorphoses III 339510 by Ed Tattersall
475
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