The Oxford English Literary History
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Description
The Oxford English Literary History is the new century's definitive account of a rich and diverse literary heritage that stretches back for a millennium and more.Each of these groundbreaking volumes offers a leading scholar's considered assessment of the authors, works, cultural traditions, events, and ideas that shaped the literary voices of their age. The series will enlighten and inspire not only everyone studying, teaching, and researching in English Literature, but all serious readers.
In the 1960s literature began to throw off its post-war weariness. New voices, new visions, and new commitments emerged and continued to reshape writing profoundly and excitingly throughout the rest of the century. Critics have scarcely begun to chart the scale and diversity of these changes. This new volume in The Oxford English Literary History maps them comprehensively. It also identifies the historical, social and intellectual pressures which brought them about. Throughout, literary developments are dexterously related to the wider evolution of English experience in the late twentieth century--to shadows of war and loss of empire; declining influences of class; shifting relations between the genders; emergent minority and counter-cultures; the broadening democratization of contemporary life in general. Analyses of the rise of literary theory, of publishing and the book trade, and of the pervasive influences of modernism and postmodernism contribute further to an impressively comprehensive, insightful account of this period--a far more imaginative and exciting one for English writing than has yet been generally recognized.
Features
- Provides an indispensable, comprehensive account of the period's authors, texts, and movements
- Covers a broad range of topics, such as the rise of literary theory, of publishing and the book trade, and the pervasive influences of modernism and postmodernism
Reviews
"This is an extraordinary book, both in its learning and its easy-going accessibility: an authoritative, yet truly companionable companion to modern English literature."--The Scotsman
"If you want to get a sense of the larger patterns to be found in the kaleidoscope of recent and contemporary writing then this book is a very good place to start."--Stefan Collini, Guardian Review
"The new Oxford English Literary History series [is] destined to become a standard academic source.... Advanced undergraduates will join lifelong learners in praising these volumes as sources of renewed and renewable literary energy."--The Providence Journal
About the Author(s)
Randall Stevenson is Reader in English Literature and Deputy Head of Department at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Modernist Fiction; Reader's Guide to the Twentieth Century Novel in Britain, The British Novel Since the Thirties, as well as many articles on modernist and postmodernist fiction.
