Overview
- Navigates between formalist criticism and context-based criticism
- Examines a carefully selected group of key texts from a broad spectrum of Anglophone literature
- Takes an original approach to twentieth century literature by focusing on the under-studied genre of the epistolary novel
Part of the book series: New Comparisons in World Literature (NCWL)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
By taking the epistle as its starting point and pursuing Auerbach’s speculative ideal of weltliteratur, this book turns away from the dominant trend of ‘distant reading’ in world literature, and shows that it is in the close situated analysis of form and composition that the concept of world literature emerges most clearly. This study seeks to re-think the ways in which we read world literature and shows how the literary letter, in old and new forms, speaks powerfully again in this period.
Reviews
“This lucid and original book explores the relationships between the epistolary novel, the world and postcolonial literature with a keen, critical eye and a nuanced concern for the material productions of texts, focusing on detailed readings as well as a wider global background. In doing so, Bower both reviews and reforms part of the field, and so this book should be read by those with an interest in the contemporary novel, postcolonialism and literary theory more generally.” (Professor Robert Eaglestone, Royal Holloway University of London, UK)
“Theoretically bold and unafraid to make compelling aesthetic judgments, Epistolarity and World Literature is among those rare and valuable books that make a serious attempt to overcome the gap between close reading and historical context, between formal structure and social structure, literary object and literary field.” (Professor Nicholas Brown, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Epistolarity and World Literature, 1980-2010
Authors: Rachel Bower
Series Title: New Comparisons in World Literature
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58166-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-58165-1Published: 18 October 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-86337-5Published: 14 August 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-58166-8Published: 29 September 2017
Series ISSN: 2634-6095
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6109
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 215
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Postcolonial/World Literature, Comparative Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature