Literature as history
Subtitle: essays in honour of Peter Widdowson
By: edited by Simon Barker and Jo Gill
Series: Continuum literary studies series
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 2010
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 189
ISBN-13: 9780826433855
Description: Literature as History presents a selection of specially commissioned essays by a range of key contemporary thinkers on the interdisciplinary study of literature and history. The unifying theme is the interrelationship between literary / cultural production and its historical moment. The essays in the collection are astute and exciting in terms of their engagement with ever-changing developments in critical and theoretical practice while retaining an invaluable focus on familiar and engaging texts and authors. The contributors offer a reappraisal of the nature of literary studies today, looking back over the thirty-five years of Peter Widdowson's career - a career which has coincided with the emergence of, challenges to, and reformulations of critical theory - and ask what the future holds, particularly for the interdisciplinary ways of working which Widdowson pioneered. Bringing together distinguished scholars in the interdisciplinary study of English and History, it seizes the opportunity to take stock of the current field of literary studies and to ask searching questions about its future development.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.