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Literature Insights

General Editor: Dr Charles Moseley

Fellow and Director of Studies in English, Hughes Hall, Cambridge

To reserve a title in this series please email Charles Moseley (cwrdm2@cam.ac.uk)

1. Literature Insights: Titles Published, in Preparation or Reserved

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice	Bharat Tandon, Jesus College, Cambridge
William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience; Marriage of Heaven & Hell	Matthew Green, University of Nottingham
Samuel Beckett, Murphy and Watt	Reserved
Samuel Beckett, Three Novels	Reserved
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre	C T Watts, Sussex University
Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus	Reserved
Angela Carter, Wise Children	Reserved
Bruce Chatwin: In Patagonia	Matthew Graves, University of Aix en Provence
Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent	C. T. Watts, Sussex University
Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems	Reserved
George Eliot, Middlemarch	Reserved
George Eliot: Silas Marner	Bharat Tandon, Jesus College, Cambridge
T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets	C. J. Ackerley, Associate Professor of English, University of Otago
T. S. Eliot: Prufrock and The Waste Land	C. J. Ackerley
William Faulkner, Light in August	Reserved
Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury	Michael Cotsell, University of Delaware
Joseph Fielding, Joseph Andrews	Reserved
Joseph Fielding, Tom Jones	Mihaela Irimia, University of Bucharest
E. M. Forster, Howard's End	Reserved
E. M. Forster, A Passage to India	Reserved
Robert Frost, Selected Poems	Reserved
Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton	Richard Gravil
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the Durbervilles	C T Watts, Sussex University
Seamus Heaney, Selected Poems	Chris Jones, St Andrews University
G. M. Hopkins: Selected Poems	John Gilroy, Cambridge University
Ted Hughes: Selected Poems	Neil Roberts, University of Sheffield
Ibsen, The Doll's House	Stephen Siddall
Kazuo Ishiguro, Remains of the Day	Reserved
D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers	Andrew Harrison, University of Warwick
D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love	Neil Roberts, University of Sheffield
D. H. Lawrence: The Rainbow	Neil Roberts, University of Sheffield
D. H. Lawrence, Selected Poems	Reserved
Malcolm Lowry: Under the Volcano	C. J. Ackerley, Associate Professor of English, University of Otago
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick	Reserved
Toni Morrison: Beloved	Yvonne Pearson, College of St Mark & St John
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire	Reserved
Charles Reade, The Cloister & the Hearth	Reserved
Poetry of the First World War	Stuart Sillars, University of Bergen
A Guide to Rhetorical Terms	Christopher Kelen, University of Macau
Shakespeare: Hamlet	John Lennard, University of the West Indies
Shakespeare: Henry IV	Charles Moseley, Hughes Hall, Cambridge
Shakespeare: Macbeth	Edward Esche, Anglia Ruskin University
Shakespeare: Midsummer Night's Dream	Reserved
Shakespeare: King Lear	Alex Lindsay, St Catharine's College, Cambridge
Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice	Boika Sokolova
Shakespeare: Richard II	Michael Hattaway, University of Sheffield
Shakespeare: Richard III	Charles Moseley, Hughes Hall, Cambridge
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet	John Roe, University of York
Shakespeare: The Tempest	Charles Moseley, Hughes Hall, Cambridge
Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida	Terry Hodgson
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein	Essaka Joshua, Birmingham University
Laurence Sterne: Tristram Shandy	Mihaela Irimia, University of Bucharest
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Selected Poems	Reserved
Edward Thomas, Selected Poems	Reserved
Mark Twain, Huck Finn	Gregorio Stephens, UWI, Mona
Derek Walcott, Selected Poems	Reserved
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth	Reserved
Oscar Wilde, Selected Works	Reserved
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse	Reserved
Wordsworth: Lyrical Ballads	Richard Gravil, author of Wordsworth's Bardic Vocation

2. Topics on which Proposals are Invited

Please nominate other titles or topics, especially if they are new syllabus favourites, with little secondary literature yet available. Advance enquiries about general titles, relating to literary concepts, and titles in Classical Literature will be equally welcome. The first wave of Literature Insights will concentrate on English/American single text/author topics. The second wave will embrace Classical Studies, which of its nature is interdisciplinary between literature, history, philosophy and archaeology, and the series will then grow to encompass genre studies, period studies, context studies and literary terms. In the meantime, both Philosophy Insights and History Insights will include some titles involving the intersection between these disciplines and literature.

3. Guidelines for Authors

Each Literature Insights title will aim to leave the reader with a sense both of the cultural and historical context of the work and also of its richness. While readers will be alerted to its various strands of significance, they will be left with a sense of the interpretive decisions, valuations and aesthetic responses that they still have to make. Each title dealing with an individual work in this series will be approximately 25,000 to 30,000 words in length and will include, in the order and with the balance appropriate to the work discussed:

• An overview of the writer's life, times, and thematic preoccupations. The account may be sectionalised (e.g. Life, Times, Themes) or it may be integrated in any manner that suits the subject. There will be most emphasis on those aspects without a knowledge of which a new reader may find difficulties in fully understanding the strategies and concerns of the writer. Suggested length: 5000 words.


• A thorough account of the author's literary strategies, and where applicable his or her theories about what he or she was doing in writing the work. This account will include all of his or her theses and adages concerning his or her art ('nothing can please long, and please many, but just representations of general nature', 'it is, above all, to make you see…'; 'we need to be taught to feel...'; 'a selection of the language really used by men'; removing 'the selfish film of familiarity'). There will be some account of conspicuous literary and cultural alignments (schools, movements, formative collaborations). Suggested length: up to 5000 words


• A close reading of the work in question, stressing literary strategies, cruces of interpretation, and the hermeneutic issues that arise in the reading experience. Each work discussed will of course suggest a different way of handling this, the longest section of the book. But this section ought to cover the work methodically. It is, for example, likely to cover most of the chapters in a novel, or most of the poems in a collection. There will be, however, types of writing - e.g. drama - where this would not be appropriate. What is important is that the sense of a coherent overview is maintained, with an emphasis on what the reader or audience is being invited to do at each point in the encounter with the work. (In the case of a novel, for example: how much is foreshadowed in the opening chapter(s); what the introduction of a character might signify; how one might negotiate particular ironies; symbolic aspects of description; what a particular event is for [is this death primarily intended to prevent premature closure of the plot, or is it a thematic statement?]; notation and discussion of significant tropes, ambiguities, hermeneutic cruces, and so forth). Suggested length: about 12-15,000 words.


• An introduction to and appraisal of the most influential critical accounts of, and approaches to, the writer and the work. This should be selective and may be as engaged as you like to make it. It should introduce only those critical accounts and methodologies that have had (or in your view ought to have had) a significant impact on reception. All technical terms must be clearly explained, where necessary in a hyperlink with references. While this part of the discussion will usually be a separate section, you may find it desirable to integrate some aspects of reception-study into the reading itself. Suggested length: more than 5000 words.


• A select annotated bibliography of, say, ten to twelve groundbreaking studies and any important films, recordings or other materials.

In writing for electronic publication, you have certain tools that can be of great pedagogic utility. The hyperlink for example can be used for a coherent and succinct extended note, relevant to the main discussion, which would seriously disrupt it if included therein - and it is important that the main discussion have a strong and energetic forward thrust which will engage readers who are in the main in the early stages of their scholarly careers. But this hyperlink option should not be over used, and the temptation to have hyperlinks within hyperlinks should be resisted. Illustrations can also be of very great help. But do be aware that there can be copyright problems, and if you wish to include illustrations you must persuade the General Editor (a) that they are necessary and not just decorative - i.e. they must be discussed - and (b) that you have where necessary sought and obtained copyright clearance. It is not required that each title in Literature Insights will be written in five sections, as set out above. The particular work may be better treated in four, six, or more sections, and you may find it desirable to combine the essential material in a different way. It would be appropriate, however, for the 'close reading' section described above to occupy approximately half of the length of the work. And it is necessary that each of the above features will appear, in some form, in each title, so that purchasers know what they are getting, and so that the series develops a reliable identity.

created on 2007-02-14 13:39:23 by humbook