How to read literature

Author(s): Terry Eagleton

Essays / Literary Studies

What makes a work of literature good or bad? How freely can the reader interpret it? Could a nursery rhyme like Baa Baa Black Sheep be full of concealed loathing, resentment and aggression? In this accessible, delightfully entertaining book, Terry Eagleton addresses these intriguing questions and a host of others. How to Read Literature is the book of choice for students new to the study of literature and for all other readers interested in deepening their understanding and enriching their reading experience. In a series of brilliant analyses, Eagleton shows how to read with due attention to tone, rhythm, texture, syntax, allusion, ambiguity, and other formal aspects of literary works. He also examines broader questions of character, plot, narrative, the creative imagination, the meaning of fictionality, and the tension between what works of literature say and what they show. Unfailingly authoritative and cheerfully opinionated, the author provides useful commentaries on classicism, Romanticism, modernism and postmodernism along with spellbinding insights into a huge range of authors, from Shakespeare and Jane Austen to Samuel Beckett and J. K. Rowling.


Product Information

Terry Eagleton is Distinguished Professor of Literature, University of Lancaster, UK. One of the most influential literary critics in the English-speaking world, he is the author of more than 40 books on literary theory, postmodernism, politics, ideology and religion, among them his best-selling Literary Theory: An Introduction. He lives in Northern Ireland.

General Fields

  • : 9780300205305
  • : Yale University Press
  • : Yale University Press
  • : 0.249
  • : May 2014
  • : 210mm X 138mm
  • : United States
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Terry Eagleton
  • : Terry Eagleton
  • : 232
  • : 232
  • : 801.95
  • : 801.95
  • : English
  • : English
  • : 414
  • : 414
  • : Paperback
  • : Paperback