Thomas Hardy has long been critically constructed as 'poet of Wessex' and 'novelist of Character and Environment'. This volume offers to deconstruct such a mythic 'Hardy' in selecting contemporary critical essays which re-present Tess from very different critical perspectives. Feminist, cultural-materialist and poststructuralist approaches in particular explore gender, class and language by way of the novel's riven textuality. In the process, the Introduction claims, Tess emerges as a potent postmodern text.

The author, a leading and influential critic of Thomas Hardy, brings together for the first time essays representing both his major critical work over the last fifteen years and three entirely new pieces. This volume allows readers to test the force of Widdowson's critical polemic in undispersed form. Readable, engaged and, no doubt, often infuriating, this is a book for all those who still regard Hardy as 'our contemporary'.

This introductory volume provides an overview of the history of Literature as a cultural concept, and reflects on the contemporary nature, place and function of what the literary might mean for us today. Literature:
* offers a concise history of the canonic concept of 'literature' from its earliest origins
* illustrates the kinds of theoretical issues which are currently invoked by the term 'literary'
* provides a definition of the 'literary' for the twenty-first century
With Literature Peter Widdowson provides a thought-provoking essay on the contemporary...

Widely popular throughout the world, Hardy still seems to speak to us, in fiction and in poetry, as our contemporary. In this new edition of his popular study, Peter Widdowson identifies the elements in his work which enable Hardy to be read in this way: the focus on unstable class and sexual relations in a society undergoing rapid change;