While providing a critical introduction for the student of Samuel Beckett's work and for other readers and theatre-goers who have been influenced by it, this study also presents an original perspective on one of the twentieth century's greatest writers of prose fiction and drama. Andrew Kennedy links Beckett's vision of a diminished humanity with his art of formally and verbally diminished resources, and traces the fundamental simplicity and coherence of Beckett's work beneath its complex textures. In the section on the plays, Dr Kennedy stresses the humour and tragicomic humanism alongside...
While providing a critical introduction for the student of Samuel Beckett's work and for other readers and theatre-goers who have been influenced by i...
Judith Woolf's elegantly written book introduces school and university students, as well as the interested general reader, to the major novels of Henry James (1843-1916), the American writer who became a great European novelist and died a naturalized Englishman.
The principal novels in which James explored his central theme, the betrayal of innocence, are discussed in a lucid way which offers fresh interpretations and communicates to the non-specialist reader the excitement rather than the difficulty of reading James. Difficulty is nonetheless often a feature of his work, and Judith Woolf...
Judith Woolf's elegantly written book introduces school and university students, as well as the interested general reader, to the major novels of Henr...
This book provides a comprehensive and stimulating introduction to Eliot's poetry for those reading and studying it, perhaps for the first time. The poems--as well as some of the poetic drama and relevant prose criticism--are discussed in detail and placed in relation to the development of Eliot's oeuvre, to his life, and to a wider context of philosophical and religious enquiry.
This book provides a comprehensive and stimulating introduction to Eliot's poetry for those reading and studying it, perhaps for the first time. The p...
This book offers a revaluation of Keats' major poetry. It reveals how Keats' work is both an oblique criticism of the dominant attitudes to literature, sexuality, religion and politics in his period, and a powerful critique of the claims of the imagination. For all that he shares the optimistic humanism of progressives like Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley, Keats nevertheless questions the sufficiency of either Art or Beauty. Professor Barnard shows how the notorious attack on Keats as a Cockney poet was motivated by class and political bias. He analyses the problems facing Keats as a...
This book offers a revaluation of Keats' major poetry. It reveals how Keats' work is both an oblique criticism of the dominant attitudes to literature...
