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Life Changing Criticism!
The Great War and Modern MemoryThe Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell
Buy new: £6.99 / Used from: £4.45
Intensely readable dissection of the British Literary response to the Great War. A classic in every sense.
Minotaur: Poetry in the Nation StateMinotaur: Poetry in the Nation State by Tom Paulin
Buy used from: £6.67
Idiosyncratic but finely honed essays on the political and historical resonances of English poetry, from one of the sharpest literary minds in the business!
The New Bloomsday Book: Guide Through "Ulysses"The New Bloomsday Book: Guide Through "Ulysses" by Harry Blamires
Buy new: £15.14 / Used from: £9.99
Stake your claim in the greatest novel ever written! The front door key to Joyce's masterpiece.
This Stage-play World: Texts and Contexts, 1580-1625 (OPUS)This Stage-play World: Texts and Contexts, 1580-1625 (OPUS) by Julia Briggs
Buy new: £21.85 / Used from: £16.42
Lucid and original introduction to the Elizabethan Age. Will reinvent your reading!
The Critical Eye (Language Skills)The Critical Eye (Language Skills) by Don Shiach
Buy used from: £0.53
Getting old, but still a great tool to begin serious close critical reading.
The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (Penguin Psychology)The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (Penguin Psychology) by Bruno Bettelheim
Buy new: £7.09 / Used from: £4.00
Hugely impressive psychological deconstruction of fairy tales. A must to decode magic realism.
Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971-2001 by Seamus Heaney
Buy new: £12.11 / Used from: £17.07
A great critic also - following the Yeatsian model! One of poetry's most impressive modern advocates.
The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literacy Imagination (Yale Nota Bene)The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literacy Imagination (Yale Nota Bene) by SM Gilbert
Buy new: £9.14 / Used from: £5.49
Resounding overview of 19th century writing in English by women. Comprehensive, detailed and revolutionary.
Renaissance Self Fashioning: From More to ShakespeareRenaissance Self Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare by Stephen J. Greenblatt
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Founding text of new historicism - the realisation of the self in Renaissance literature
Thomas Hardy and British PoetryThomas Hardy and British Poetry by Donald Davie
Buy used from: £17.95
Guide to the roots of modern poetry in English - back to Hardy's Wessex.