Is Shakespeare Any Good?: And Other Questions on How to Evaluate Literature

ISBN-13: 9781118220016 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 344 str.

Richard Bradford

Opis

Is Shakespeare any Good? reveals why certain literary works and authors are treated as superior to others, and questions the literary establishment's criteria for creating an imperium of -great- writers.

• Enables readers to articulate and formulate their own arguments about the quality of literature - including works that convention forbids us to dislike
• Dismantles the claims of academic criticism - particularly Theory - to tell us anything useful about why we like or appreciate literature
• Challenges and shatters many longstanding beliefs about literature and its evaluation
• Poses serious questions about the value of literature, and studying literature, and presents these in a lively and entertainingly provocative manner

Is Shakespeare any Good? reveals why certain literary works and authors are treated as superior to others, and questions the literary establishment s criteria for creating an imperium of great writers.

Recenzje

"Is Shakespeare any Good? is refreshingly honest and controversial, a lucid and sometimes startling assessment of what makes literature literature, as well as a much-needed breath of fresh air within the locked room of literary study. This volume constitutes a vital contribution to the ongoing debate on literary aesthetics and proposes an entirely new methodology for the study of literature as well as a convincing apology for English as a subject. Bradford has a gift for making complex ideas simple and shining light into dark corners."--Madelena Gonzalez, University of Avingnon'Richard Bradford has produced a pugnacious and carefully constructed critique of modern attitudes to the vexed question of how we should set about evaluating literary texts. Its insistence on the desirability of that much maligned abstract 'taste' is thoroughly to be applauded.'--D. J. Taylor, Author of Orwell: The Life, winner of the Whitbread Biography Prize."Is Shakespeare any Good? is refreshingly honest and controversial, a lucid and sometimes startling assessment of what makes literature, as well as a much-needed breath of fresh air within the locked room of literary study. This volume constitutes a vital contribution to the ongoing debate on literary aesthetics and proposes an entirely new methodology for the study of literature as well as a convincing apology for English as a subject. Bradford has a gift for making complex ideas simple and shining light into dark corner."--Madelena Gonzalez, University of Avignon

Spis treści

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 A Brief Essay on Taste 5

2 The Dreadful Legacy of Modernism 44

3 Is Shakespeare Any Good? 90

4 Mad Theories 131

5 Defining Literature: The Bête Noir of Academia 166

6 Evaluation 193

7 Popular Literature 243

8 Is Literature Any Good For Us? 272

References 321

Index 326

O autorze

Richard Bradford is Research Professor of English at the University of Ulster. He is the author of two dozen books, including specialized academic monographs and six literary biographies. Recent work includes Literary Rivals, (2014), The Novel Now (2007) and First Boredom, Then Fear: The Life of Philip Larkin (2006).

Blurb

After reading a few pages of a book, you might find yourself gripped, moved, bored, or in the case of far too many literary classics – somewhat astonished that it ever got into print at all. While initial impressions are often influenced by personal literary tastes, one may also be reacting to writing that is very good or genuinely bad. But who decides what constitutes good literature? If you wish to know the reasons why a book is considered good or bad, you d be hard–pressed to find the answers in a university literature course. Exploring issues that academics have studiously avoided for years, Is Shakespeare any Good? reveals why certain literary works and authors are treated as superior to others, and boldly questions the literary establishment s criteria for creating an imperium of great writers. Author Richard Bradford shows us how to articulate our own informed opinions on the qualities or deficiencies of a literary work – whether the author in question is James Joyce, Jeffrey Archer, or the Bard of Avon himself. Also covered are: self–appointed arbiters of taste in the literary world; academia s wretched influence in the shaping literary merit (or to be more accurate its failure to say  anything relevant); whether popular literature s bad rap is warranted; does reading and studying literature do us any good?; the dreadful legacy of Modernism; and more. It also asks this frank question of one of literature s greatest sacred cows – who says we can t dislike Shakespeare? Lively and provocative, Is Shakespeare any Good? is certain to raise a few eyebrows while elevating the level of debate about the true nature of literary merit.