literature Archives

Transgressing gender and genre: Isabella Whitney’s appropriation of London

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Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier discusses Isabella Whitney’s poetry that appropriates the city of London to transgress both poetry and politics.

The poet Isabella Whitney is considered the first professional female writer in England to have had secular poetry published under her own name. Dr Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier, professor of English literature at Hildesheim University, Germany, explores how Whitney presents herself as a respectable female poet in a male-dominated era by ‘appropriating’ the city of London, irrevocably weaving herself into its history […]

A life in literature: An interview with Professor Nicholas Royle

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Creative abstract landscape. Interview with Nicholas Royle, who is Professor of English at the University of Sussex and founding director of the Centre for Creative and Critical Thought. Since publishing his first work of criticism – Telepathy and Literature – in 1991, his creative output has been consistently varied and rewarding, blurring any firm conception of form or genre. Royle remains most widely known, perhaps, for his introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, written with Professor Andrew Bennett. The book is a remarkably creative and ever-evolving project which appraises literature through a shifting array of lenses, prompting us to reassess what we ultimately mean by the ’literary’ as distinct from other forms of writing.

Nicholas Royle is Professor of English at the University of Sussex and founding director of the Centre for Creative and Critical Thought. Since publishing his first work of criticism – Telepathy and Literature – in 1991, his creative output has been consistently varied and rewarding, blurring any firm conception of form or genre. Royle remains most widely known, perhaps, for […]

The knowing child’s quest in contemporary American fiction

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A particular cultural icon is the theme of the adolescent, usually male, who sets out from the countryside to seek his fortune in the city.

The image of an adolescent growing up and making sense of the world is a familiar icon in many cultures around the world. Yuki Namiki from Tokyo Kasei University in Japan looks at how two 21st century American novels use the trope in line with literary tradition but also depart from it to explore family relationships in contemporary society. Both […]