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Never Ones For Theory? England and the War of Ideas
The first study of 20th-century English literary theory, showing how England pioneered the academic study of theories of literature years in advance of France or the USA.
ISBN-13: 9780718830090 |
The British have often denied the very existence of a tradition of English literary theory. George Watson redeems that denial in his latest book, the first study of 20th Century English theory.
The book begins with Yeats, Pound and Eliot, who made England their home. In subsequent chapters, based on personal recollection as well as published sources, it assesses the contribution of I.A. Richards, William Empson, F.R. Leavis, C.S. Lewis, Isaiah Berlin and Wittgenstein, as well as Marxists like E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams.
English literary theory is a tradition that has suffered in reputation, paradoxically, by the sheer fertility of its invention. In this seminal work the author celebrates that fertility from the first world war down to the death of Iris Murdoch in 1999, showing that England pioneered the academic study of theories of literature years in advance of France or the USA.
Download the Preface here (PDF, 13 KB)
Download Chapter One here (PDF, 47 KB)
Also available:
Paperback Edition
George Watson is a Fellow in English at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He is the author of The Literary Critics, to which Never Ones for Theory? is a sequel, and general editor of the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature.
Other titles available by George Watson:
The English Ideology
Lost Literature of Socialism (Paperback Edition (Reprint))
Lost Literature of Socialism (Hardback Edition)
Lost Literature of Socialism (Paperback Edition)
The Story of the Novel
Take Back the Past: Myths of the Twentieth Century
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