This major reference work is a guide to the study of English literature and critical assessment. Divided into ten major sections, the volume consists of a sequence of authoritative essays covering both the traditional and the new. Current critical ideas are discussed, while the volume as a whole provides a wide-ranging introduction to the rich diversity of opinion that characterizes contemporary thinking about literature in English.

One phrase from Argura - imploded strophe dispersed canzone - sets an internalized choral impulse alongside a diffuse songlike one, the dispersed canzone still pledged to argument. This criss-cross defines a compositional zone which, though contemporary, does not grant automatic access: this finding may be the controlling one behind Argura. The work included falls on either side of Peck's Poems and Translations of Hi-Lo, published by Carcanet in 1991.

A ground-breaking study of how literature both reflected and contributed to the eclipse and subsequent revival of militarism in the nineteenth century. Focusing on four major disputes in the Crimea, India, the Sudan, and South Africa as well as the role of the army in Britain, John Peck examines how Victorian writers responded to military issues. At the heart of the book is a dilemma that characterises the Victorian period: the impossibility of reconciling imperial aggression with liberal domestic values.

How to Study a Novel has long been established as the one book about the novel that every student of literature at school or university needs to read. In a series of clearly written, eminently practical chapters, John Peck takes the reader through a set of logical steps that show him how to respond to, interpret and develop his own view of a novel and how to present that response in an effective essay. This thoroughly revised and expanded Second Edition has three new chapters taking this process one step further, showing how to make use of the new critical thinking that has swept...

This book introduces a process-based, patient-centered approach to palliative care that substantiates an indication-oriented treatment and radical reconsideration of our transition to death. Drawing on decades of work with terminally ill cancer patients and a trove of research on near-death experiences, Monika Renz encourages practitioners to not only safeguard patients' dignity as they die but also take stock of their verbal, nonverbal, and metaphorical cues as they progress, helping to personalize treatment and realize a more peaceful death.

Renz divides dying into three parts:...