David Lodge

Nigel Wood

A Reader (2nd Edition)

Modern Criticism and Theory

This third edition of Modern Criticism and Theory represents a major expansion on its previous incarnations with some twenty five new pieces or essays included. This expansion has two principal purposes. Firstly, in keeping with the collection’s aim to reflect contemporary preoccupations, the reader has expanded forward to include such newly emergent considerations as ecocriticism and post-theory. Secondly, with the aim of presenting as broad an account of modern theory as possible, the reader expands backwards to to take in exemplary pieces by formative writers and thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such as Marx, Freud and Virginia Woolf.. This radical expansion of content is prefaced by a wide-ranging introduction, which provides a rationale for the collection and demonstrates how connections can be made between competing theories and critical schools. The purpose of the collection remains that of introducing the reader to the guiding concepts of contemporary literary and cultural debate. It does so by presenting substantial extracts from seminal thinkers and surrounding them with the contextual materials necessary to a full understanding. Each selection has a headnote, which gives biographical details of the author and provides suggestions for further reading, and footnotes that help explain difficult references. The collection is ordered both historically and thematically and readers are encouraged to draw for themselves connections between essays and theories. Modern Criticism and Theory has long been regarded as a necessary collection. Now revised for the twenty first century it goes further and provides students and the general reader with a wide-ranging survey of the complex landscape of modern theory and a critical assessment of the way we think – and live – in the world today.

A Reader

Arden Shakespeare and Theory provides a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical developments that have dominated Shakespeare studies in recent years, as well as those that are emerging at the present moment. Each volume provides: · a clear definition of a particular theory; · a survey of its major theorists and critics; · an analysis of its significance in Shakespeare studies; · a summary of relevant political, social and economic contexts; · a wealth of suggested resources for further investigation. Reception Theory provides readers with a unique overview and understanding of the ways in which both audiences and readers have reacted to Shakespeare's works historically and in the present. This study demonstrates how recent emphases on a reader's and a spectator's role in the creation of meaning might allow us to contemplate Shakespeare's work in fresh and often provocative ways. Among the plays included as case studies are A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, The Tempest, King Lear and Henry V. Shakespeare and Reception Theory pays close attention to early modern modes of interaction in the playhouse alongside more recent assumptions that underlie spectating and performing.

Shakespeare and Reception Theory

Building on the strengths of the first edition, this volume introduces the key concepts of current literary and cultural debate and presents substantial extracts from the period's most seminal thinkers.

This collection of critical thinking situates the satire of Jonathan Swift within both its eighteenth-century contexts and our modern anxieties about personal identity and communication. Augustan satire at its most provocative is not simply concerned with the public matters of politics or religion, but also offers a precise medium in which to express the paradox of ironic detachment amidst deep conviction. The critics chosen for this volume demonstrate the complexity of Swift's work. Its four sections explore matters of authorial identity, the relation between Swift's writing and its historical context, the full range of his comments on gender, and his deployment of metaphor and irony to engage the reader. Swift has often been regarded as a writer who anticipated many twentieth-century cultural preoccupations, and this volume provides an opportunity to test just how modern he actually was. It also provides an answer to those who would wish to simplify his writing as that of Tory and misogynist. The theoretical perspectives of the contributors are lucidly explained and their critical terms located in the wider contexts of contemporary theory in the introduction and headnotes. The volume places Swift historically within the philosophical and religious traditions of eighteenth-century thought.

Jonathan Swift

Joseph Needham

Rose Kerr

How were Chinese pots made, glazed and fired? Why did China discover porcelain more than 1,000 years before the West? What are the effects of China's influence on world ceramics? These questions (and many more) are answered in this history of Chinese ceramic technology, from the late Stone Age to the twenty-first century AD. The non-specialist reader will appreciate its unique coverage of research materials originally published in several languages.

Science and Civilisation in China

Gareth Kelly

WJEC Physics for AS Level: Student Book

John Drakakis

Shylock and Shakespeare's Venetians have provoked perennial debate about issues of race and gender. Is Shylock presented as a stage villain or a potent reminder of Gentile prejudice! What social order is triumphant in Belmont at the conclusion to the action'? Can (or should) modern audiences, in any case, bear Elizabethan assumptions in mind when now considering the play'?

The Merchant of Venice

Chinese pottery has long been esteemed not only for its beauty and delicacy but also for the utility and efficiency evident in the potter's skill.

Nigel Wood

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