How does literature work? And what does it mean? How does it relate to the world: to politics, to history, to the environment? How do we analyse and interpret a literary text, paying attention to its specific poetic and fictitious qualities? This wide-ranging introduction helps students to explore these and many other essential questions in the study of literature, criticism and theory. In a series of introductory chapters, leading international scholars present the fundamental topics of literary studies through conceptual definitions as well as interpretative readings of works familiar from a range of world literary traditions.
In an easy-to-navigate format,
Literature: An Introduction to Theory and Analysis covers such topics as:
-Key definitions - from plot, character and style to genre, trope and author
-Literature's relationship to the surrounding world - ethics, politics, gender and nature
-Modes of literature and criticism - from books to performance, from creative to critical writing
With annotated reading guides throughout and a glossary of major critical schools to help students when studying, revising and writing essays, this is an essential introduction and reference guide to the study of literature at all levels
Møller, Lis: - Lis Møller is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Aarhus University, Denmark. She is the author of Erindringens poetik: William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey (2011) and The Freudian Reading: Analytical and Fictional Constructions (1991; republished as eBook 2016) and co-editor since 2012 of Romantik. Journal for the Study of Romanticisms. She is the editor of several volumes including a textbook in literary analysis, Om litteraturanalyse (1995).
Ringgaard, Dan: - Dan Ringgaard is a Professor at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. He is the author of a number of books on poets, poetry and poetics, and, more recently, books on place, on creativity and on the postliterary. Co-editor of A Comparative History of Nordic Literary Cultures 1-3.
Rösing, Lilian Munk: - Lilian Munk Rösing is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. She has published four books (three in Danish, one in English) and a large number of articles combining psychoanalysis with literary and cultural criticism. Latest publication: Pixar with Lacan: The Hysteric's Guide to Animation (2016).
Simonsen, Peter: - Peter Simonsen is Professor of European Literature at the University of Southern Denmark. He is the author of Wordsworth and Word-Preserving Arts (2007) and several related articles on Romanticism, ekphrasis and textual materiality. In 2014 he published (in Danish) Lifelong Lives, a study of fiction about old age and the welfare state. Peter was co-editor of Literature: An Introduction to Theory and Analysis published by Bloomsbury in 2017.
Thomsen, Mads Rosendahl: - Mads Rosendahl Thomsen is Professor of Comparative Literature at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is the author of Mapping World Literature: International Canonization and Transnational Literature (2008) and The New Human in Literature: Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society (2013), and the editor of several volumes, including World Literature: A Reader (2012). He is a member of the Academia Europaea and an advisory board member of the Institute for World Literature.
