Literature in contexts / Peter Barry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Barry, Peter, 1947-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Criticism.

Context (Linguistics).

Physical Description:

ix, 202 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester [Eng.] ; New York : Manchester University Press : distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave, [2007]

Summary:

Is it possible to return the literary text in all its particularity to the centre of literary study, without going back to the 'words-on-the page' myopia of the past? That is the primary question which Literature in contexts engages with. In the 1980s the study of the study of literary theory eclipsed the study of the literary text, but today, we are told, we are 'post theory'. Yet, as it emerged from the shadow of theory, the literary text was eclipsed all over again by the study of context. Historicist contextualisation became the dominant orientation in literary studies, and this (not quite new) New Historicism spread in turn through period after period, from the Early Modern, through Romanticism, and on to the Victorian era. 'Is English History?', people began to ask, as it became impossible to attend an academic conference without being subjected to a diet of history lessons.

This book seeks to problematise the very notion of context, which has remained for the most part stubbornly un-theorised and un-examined, and it seeks out - in a series of contextualising experiments - contexts which are text-specific, or author-specific, or literary rather than historical, putting forward a distinction between 'deep' and 'broad' contexts, and arguing that we need to counter the prevalence of the latter if literary studies is to avoid becoming a minor branch of history.

Contents:

Introduction: half-acre tombs 1

1 Contextuality in context 9

2 Contextuality contested 32

3 Mutual contextuality: Coleridge's conversation poems 52

4 Contextualising Hemans's shipwrecks 87

5 'Seeing the spot': Hopkins, Liverpool, and context 115

6 Picturing the context: contemporary poetry and ekphrasis 135

7 Beyond 'secret narrative': crime-fiction verse narratives by women 157

8 Just the facts: content is context 180.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 194-198) and index.

ISBN:

9780719064548

0719064546

OCLC:

154789062