Ways of Reading [antikvár]

Introduction Over the last two decades significant debates have taken place concerning the nature and purpose of English Studies - debates which have often been conducted in terms of theoretical criticjue and analysis. Important advances have taken place in our ways of understanding the subject matter of English; but alongside such critique, and in the wake of it, there is a growing need for materials that can help translate such theoretical and analytic insights into practical methods of study, especially for students in the earlier stages of their work. Ways of Reading is designed to provide such materials. One fundamental question to emerge from recent debates has concerned the problem of which texts should be studied. Any attempt to define English Studies in terms of Literature has rested upon some degree of assumed consensus about which particular works of English Literature were worth studying. But the consensus has always proved fragile, has never been durable, especially in the face of increasingly difficult questions posed around exclusions from the list or 'canon' of great works and anomalies within it. More recently, for instance, feminist critics have pointed instructively to the disproportionately small amount of writing by women included within the canon. Moreover, defining the field of English Studies in terms of Literature has only partially been able to deflect attention away from the difficulties attendant upon the term 'English' itself. If this term is used to refer to a national literature (the Literature of England) then only a cursory glance at key figures in the field of English Literature over the last two hundred years reveals symptomatic anomalies: we find writers from Scotland (e.g. Robert Burns), Ireland (e.g. James Joyce), Poland (Joseph Conrad), the United States (Henry James), to mention only a few. Nor is it possible to claim that the term is actually intended to designate Literature written in English, since this, by rights, should then include Literature from Canada, the United States, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, India, Australia, New Zealand, amongst others. English Studies in practice is rarely able to support such an inclusive definition, and an intricate negotiation takes place between the two senses (Literature-in-English versus Literature-of-the-English) whenever an actual syllabus is drawn up. M.