Since the late 1960s, American literature has been revitalised by the work of writers such as Toni Morrison, Sherman Alexie, Sandra Cisneros and Maxine Hong Kingston. An introduction to the study of ethnic American fictions organised into four sections, each written by a specialist in the fields of African American, Asian American, Chicano/a and native American literature. Writers are discussed in their cultural/political contexts and literary traditions (rather than as exceptions or as individuals, or on a generic basis). The book highlights common themes in ethnic writing as well as...

Beginning Shakespeare' introduces students to the study of Shakespeare, and grounds their understanding of his work in theoretical discourses. After an introductory survey of the dominant approaches of the past, seven chapters examine the major current critical approaches to Shakespeare; psychoanalysis, New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, gender studies, queer theory, postcolonial criticism and performance criticism. A further chapter looks at the growing roles of biography, attribution studies and textual studies.
Each chapter analyses the strengths and weaknesses of a particular...

Postmodernism' became the buzzword of contemporary society in the 1990s. Yet, even now, it still remains confusing and baffling in its variety of defiinitions, contexts and associations.
Beginning postmodernism aims to offer clear, accessible and step-by-step introductions to postmodernism across a wide range of subjects. It encourages readers to explore how the debates about postmodernism have emerged from basic philosophical and cultural ideas, and to develop comparative connections and ideas from one area to another.
With its emphasis firmly on 'postmodernism in practice', the book...

Realism is an essential concept in literary studies, yet for a variety of reasons it has not received the attention and clarity it deserves, often being dismissed as 'too slippery' to be of use. This accessible study remedies that failing for students and scholars of English Literature and Literary Theory alike, plainly setting out what realism is, the issues surrounding it, and its role in other major literary modes such as modernism and postmodernism.
Beginning Realism gives detailed coverage of the nineteenth-century realist novel through its focus on novels by Gaskell, Eliot,...