A Twentieth-Century Literature Reader

by Suman Gupta (editor), David Johnson (Editor)

This critical Reader is the essential companion to any course in twentieth-century literature. Drawing upon the work of a wide range of key writers and critics, the selected extracts provide:

a literary-historical overview of the twentieth century insight into theoretical discussions around the purpose, value and form of literature which dominated the century closer examination of representative texts from the period, around which key critical issues might be debated.
Clearly conveying the excitement generated by twentieth-century literary texts and by the provocative critical ideas and arguments that surrounded them, this reader can be used alongside the two volumes of Debating Twentieth-Century Literature or as a core text for any module on the literature of the last century.
Texts examined in detail include: Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, Mansfield's Short Stories, poetry of the 1930s, Gibbon's Sunset Song, Eliot's Prufrock, Brecht's Galileo, Woolf's Orlando, Okigbo's Selected Poems, du Maurier's Rebecca, poetry by Ginsburg and O'Hara, Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Puig's Kiss of the Spiderwoman, Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Heaney's New Selected Poems 1966-1987, Gurnah's Paradise and Barker's The Ghost Road.

Genres: Nonfiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 2005

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of extracts and critical essays aims to illuminate and contextualise important twentieth century memes such as classicism, Marxism, feminism and the post-colonial as they were played out in the literature of (and occasionally from outside) the European tradition. The texts are all authentic material - the editors have only added a brief note to introduce each one with minimal commentary, so the reader shouldn't expect to be spoon-fed! This book was written for an Open University course, and is meant to stimulate critical consciousness and raise starting points for debate.

Having read the book through, I am still re-reading sections of it and trying to respond to them by writing, especially as I encounter relevant longer texts. The reviews (one by George Orwell) are particularly helpful for developing a sense of the histories and societies permeated by C20th literature, and there are some excellent essays, such as Abdulrazak Gurnah's on Imagining the Postcolonial Writer.

For someone like me, trying to teach myself literary criticism, this is a very helpful work; I keep coming back to it, not for reference but out of a keen-ness to chew on an idea and take it further than I could before. It's nice to find a 'textbook' that understands what a mature learning process needs to drive it forward: mind-as-searchlight, not as-bucket.

My thoughts on Virginia Woolf's lecture The Leaning Tower

[Tim Rideout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Invaluable source material for twentieth-century literature course.

[Hannah Mccarney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful collection of reference points on several literary aspects - very easy to use, despite some difficult content

[Richard Cubitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my degree.