By Literature as History: Essays in Honour of Peter Widdowson (Continuum Literary Studies)

Product Description This title includes new essays by a range of leading theorists on the interdisciplinary study of literature and history. "Literature as History" presents a selection of specially commissioned essays by a range of key contemporary thinkers on the interdisciplinary study of literature and history. Chapters include: Catherine Belsey on Historicism, Helen Carr on Modernism, Terry Eagleton on tragedy, John Lucas on the First World War, R. C. Richardson on Servants in the 18th Century, Judy Simons on Rosamund Lehmann, and Stan Smith on Edward Thomas. The unifying theme is the interrelationship between literary/cultural production and its historical moment. The essays in the collection are astute and exciting in terms of their engagement with ever-changing developments in critical and theoretical practice while retaining an invaluable focus on familiar and engaging texts and authors. The contributors offer a reappraisal of the nature of literary studies today, looking back over the thirty-five years of Peter Widdowson's career - a career which has coincided with the emergence of, challenges to, and reformulations of critical theory - and ask what the future holds, particularly for the interdisciplinary ways of working which Widdowson pioneered. Bringing together distinguished scholars in the interdisciplinary study of English and History, it seizes the opportunity to take stock of the current field of literary studies and to ask searching questions about its future development. Review 'As the original purpose of the collection changed because of events, the meaning of these essays becomes more complex, more layered. They are at once readings of texts and a commentary on Widdowson's contribution to English Studies, but, in the light of his death, they also become something else: a history of both a cultural formation and a political project.' --Review of English Studies, 15th Feb 2011'Compiled to mark the end of Widdowson's academic career, this volume now stands as an often moving and always intellectually engaging testament to his life and work.' --Literature & History, May 2011 About the Author Simon Barker is Professor of English Literature in the Department of Humanities at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. Jo Gill is Lecturer in Twentieth-Century Literature at the University of Exeter, UK.