How to Read Literature - Hardcover

Eagleton, Terry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300190964 ISBN 13: 9780300190960

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2013

Synopsis

What makes a work of literature good or bad? How freely can the reader interpret it? Could a nursery rhyme like Baa Baa Black Sheep be full of concealed loathing, resentment, and aggression? In this accessible, delightfully entertaining book, Terry Eagleton addresses these intriguing questions and a host of others. How to Read Literature is the book of choice for students new to the study of literature and for all other readers interested in deepening their understanding and enriching their reading experience.

In a series of brilliant analyses, Eagleton shows how to read with due attention to tone, rhythm, texture, syntax, allusion, ambiguity, and other formal aspects of literary works. He also examines broader questions of character, plot, narrative, the creative imagination, the meaning of fictionality, and the tension between what works of literature say and what they show. Unfailingly authoritative and cheerfully opinionated, the author provides useful commentaries on classicism, Romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism along with spellbinding insights into a huge range of authors, from Shakespeare and J. K. Rowling to Jane Austen and Samuel Beckett.

About this title

Book Description:

In this delightfully entertaining guide, an eminent critic explains with abundant examples everything you need to know to read literary works with deeper insight, better understanding, and much more enjoyment.

About the Author:

Terry Eagleton is Distinguished Professor of Literature, University of Lancaster, UK, and Excellence in English Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Notre Dame. One of the most influential literary critics in the English-speaking world, he is the author of more than 40 books on literary theory, postmodernism, politics, ideology, and religion, among them his best-selling Literary Theory: An Introduction. He lives in Northern Ireland, UK.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0300190964
• ISBN 13: 9780300190960
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232