Modern literary study was founded on an opposition between the canon and its other, popular culture. The theory wars of the 1970s and the 1980s and, in particular, the advent of structuralist and post-structuralist theory, transformed this relationship. With the death of literature, the distinction between high and popular culture was no longer tenable, and the field of inquiry shifted from literary into cultural studies.

The topic of the unconscious has figured largely in literary studies for some time. Antony Easthope approaches this controversial subject not in terms of the body but as meanings. Using the writings of Freud and Lacan this text offers chapters on: the existence of the unconscious; the unconscious and the subject; the unconscious and the text; and the unconscious and history. The book shows the existence of the unconscious in a variety of examples - from jokes and rugby songs to Hitchcock's Psycho and the life and death of Princess Diana.

In this highly engaging book, Antony Easthope examines 'Englishness' as a form and a series of shared discourses. Discussing the subject of 'nation' - a growing area in literary and cultural studies - Easthope offers polemical arguments written in a lively and accessible style. Englishness and National Culture asserts a profound and unacknowledged continuity between the seventeenth century and today. It argues that contemporary journalists, historians, novelists, poets and comedians continue to speak through the voice of a long-standing empiricist tradition.

In this highly engaging book, Antony Easthope examines 'Englishness' as a form and a series of shared discourses. Discussing the subject of 'nation' - a growing area in literary and cultural studies - Easthope offers polemical arguments written in a lively and accessible style. Englishness and National Culture asserts a profound and unacknowledged continuity between the seventeenth century and today. It argues that contemporary journalists, historians, novelists, poets and comedians continue to speak through the voice of a long-standing empiricist tradition.

What is masculinity? How do ideas about it effect our readings of films, television, newspapers, pop music and pulp novels? In this lively and accessible text, Anthony Easthope unpicks the myth of masculinity in popular culture.