Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book

Title Literary politics : the politics of literature and the literature of politics / edited by Deborah Philips and Katy Shaw
Published [Basingstoke?] : Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Copies

Description 1 online resource
Contents 1. Introduction: The politics of literature and the literature of politics / Deborah Philips -- 2. Literature and politics / Stuart Laing -- 3. Shakespeare v The BNP / Adam Hansen -- 4. Roaring boys and weeping men: radical masculinity in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi / Kate Aughterson -- 5. Having the last word: World War I fictions as counter-narratives / Zacharoula Christopoulou 6. "Show an Affirming Flame": writers and readers in modern dark times / Rosalind Brunt -- 7. Literature, Politics And History / Paddy Maguire -- 8. The Politics of Nostalgia in the Rural English Novel / Dominic Head -- 9. (Re)Writing the 1984-5 UK Miners' Strike / Katy Shaw 10. Can the environment be saved? Post-apocalyptic children's novels of the 1980s / Dave Simpson -- 11. Access all areas? Literature and education / Steve Roberts -- 12. The politics of enhancement: the last days of the English Subject Centre / Ben Knights
Summary This collection begins from the assumption that the boundaries of English Literature as a subject area in schools and universities are necessarily political and arena for constant renegotiation and debate. The academic Literature syllabus has never been a stable phenomenon, but has been constantly subject to to interventions, whether these are explicitly political or not. The essays here identify and debate competing definitions of 'English Studies' as an academic subject, and celebrate the diversity of contemporary literary studies, and demonstrate the ways in which a range of literary texts can be understood as politically engaged, sometimes in unexpected ways. The contributions span a variety of different texts and historical periods, but each of them addresses a moment in which the interface between literature and a political context is particularly apparent. They range across the wide landscape of current undergraduate provision in university English departments and extend into the school curriculum and children's fiction. From the co-option of Shakespeare by the British National Party to the apparent conservatism of the inter-war novel and the poetry that emerged from the UK Miner's Strike, the collection of papers addresses key areas across the curriculum in schools and colleges, in a chronology that ranges from the Renaissance to the contemporary. There are also contributions from academics directly engaged with the configuration of Literature as a subject in secondary schools and universities. The collection as a whole is a intervention into current debates within literary critical theory, and education, and a reflection on the state of 'Literature' as a subject in Cameron's coalition Britain and in Gove's new world of education. Together, the papers testify to the great variety of work on the politics of teaching literature and of literary criticism in the context of the challenges of the twenty-first century
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource; title from title details screen (Palgrave Connect, viewed October 22, 2013)
Subject English literature -- Political aspects.
Literary studies: general -- English.
Educational strategies & policy -- English.
Political ideologies -- English.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
Literature.
English literature -- Political aspects
Form Electronic book
Author Philips, Deborah, 1954- editor.
Shaw, Katy, editor
ISBN 9781137270146
1137270144