Contemporary fiction is a wide and diverse field, now global in dimension, with an enormous range of novels and writers that continues to grow at a fantastic speed. In this Very Short Introduction, Robert Eaglestone provides a clear and engaging exploration of the major themes, patterns, and debates of contemporary fiction. From genre, form, and experimentalism to the legacies of modernism and postmodernism, the relationship between globalization and terrorism, and the impact of t...

Doing English presents the ideas and debates that shape how we ‘do’ English today, explaining arguments about the value of literature, the canon, Shakespeare, theory, politics and the subject itself.In his lucid and engaging style, Robert Eaglestone:orients students by encouraging them to think about what they are doing when they study literature;bridges the gap between English at A-level and International Baccalaureate to English in Higher Educatio...

Contemporary fiction is a wide and diverse field, now global in dimension, with an enormous range of novels and writers that continues to grow at a fantastic speed. In this Very Short Introduction, Robert Eaglestone provides a clear and engaging exploration of the major themes, patterns, and debates of contemporary fiction. From genre, form, and experimentalism to the legacies of modernism and postmodernism, the relationship between globalization and terrorism, and the impact of t...

Truth and Wonder is an accessible introduction to Plato and Aristotle, showing their crucial influence for literary and cultural studies, modern languages and related disciplines. It focusses on both what Plato and Aristotle say about literature and how they say it, and so demonstrates the ways their philosophies still shape our reading, thinking and living.In the clear and engaging style for which he has become known, Robert Eaglestone uses Plato and Ari...

This volume brings together some of the most well-known and highly respected commentators on the work of Jacques Derrida from Britain and America in a series of essays written to commemorate the life and come to terms with the death of one of the most important intellectual presences of our time.Derrida’s thought reached into nearly every corner of contemporary intellectual culture and the difference he has made is incalculable. He was indeed controversial but the astonishing origi...

The study of contemporary fiction is a fascinating yet challenging one. Contemporary fiction has immediate relevance to popular culture, the news, scholarly organizations, and education – where it is found on the syllabus in schools and universities – but it also offers challenges. What is ‘contemporary’? How do we track cultural shifts and changes? The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction takes on this challenge, mapping key literary trends from the year 2...

‘Facts alone are wanted in life,’ exclaims Mr Gradgrind at the beginning of Dickens’ Hard Times. Literature is not about facts alone, and – despite two and a half thousand years of arguments – no one can agree on what it is, or how to study it. But, argues Robert Eaglestone, it is precisely the open-ended nature of literature that makes it such a rewarding and useful subject.Eaglestone shows that studying literature can change who you are, turning you from a ‘reader’ into ...

Sir Salman Rushdie is perhaps the most significant living novelist in English. His second novel, Midnight's Children, is regularly cited as the 'Booker of Bookers' and its impact is still being felt throughout in world literature. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, led to the 'Rushdie Affair' certainly the most significant literary-political event since the Second World War. Rushdie has continued to produce challenging fiction, controversial, thought-provoking non-fict...

Clearly focussed on the needs of students, Robert Eaglestone and Jonathan Beecher Field have revised the best-selling Doing English specifically for English literature courses in America.Studying English presents the ideas and debates that shape literary studies in America today. This overview of the discipline explains not only what students need to know, but how and why English came to be the way it is. This uniquely comprehensive guid...

'Which writer today is not a writer of the Holocaust?' asked the late Imre Kertész, Hungarian survivor and novelist, in his Nobel acceptance speech: 'one does not have to choose the Holocaust as one's subject to detect the broken voice that has dominated modern European art for decades'. Robert Eaglestone attends to this broken voice in literature in order to explore the meaning of the Holocaust in the contemporary world, arguing, again following Kertész, that the Holocaust will 'remain th...

This collection analyses the future of ‘trauma theory’, a major theoretical discourse in contemporary criticism and theory. The chapters advance the current state of the field by exploring new areas, asking new questions and making new connections.Part one, History and Culture, begins by developing trauma theory in its more familiar post-deconstructive mode and explores how these insights might still be productive. It goes on, via a critique of existing positions, to reloc...

Brexit is a political, economic and administrative event: and it is a cultural one, too. In Brexit and Literature, Robert Eaglestone brings together a diverse range of literary scholars, writers and poets to respond to this aspect of Brexit. The discipline of ‘English’, as the very name suggests, is concerned with cultural and national identity: literary studies has always addressed ideas of nationalism and the wider political process. With the ramifications of Brexit expected to ...