Beginner's Guide to Critical Reading

Richard Jacobs teaches English at the College of Richard Collyer in Horsham, and lectures at the University of Brighton.

• Introduction 1 Wyatt’s ‘They flee from me’: sexual politics and metrical history 2 Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: framing the outsiders 3 Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida: men reading and writing a woman 4 Shakespeare’s sonnets: courtly patronage and the homoerotic 5 Milton’s Paradise Lost: republican politics and the canon 6 Marvell, Winstanley, Milton: gardens, communes and losing Paradise 7 Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels: colonialism and Eden lost again 8 Johnson and others: Toryism, the slave-trade, poverty, being and reading a character 9 Wordsworth’s poems of boyhood: myths of initiation in revolutionary times 10 Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: three-volume novels, centres and loss 11 Melville’s Bartleby: the crisis of interpretation 12 Dickinson’s poems: women writing the inexpressible 13 Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend: between men, education and law 14 Carroll’s ‘Alice’ books: remembering the love-gift 15 Wilde’s The Happy Prince: sex and politics in the fairy-tale 16 Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper: the woman’s body, hysteria, intertextuality 17 James’s The Turn of the Screw: desire in loss and the reader-response 18 Conrad’s The Secret Agent: journeying into political vision 19 Green’s Living: the working class in modernism and the search for the father 20 Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight: women in colonialism and framed in exhibition 21 Williams’s drama: realism in the theatre, policing the allowable on stage and in film 22 Hill’s ‘September Song’: the modern poet in history, the poem’s right to exist 23 Beckett’s Not I: challenging the audience with a life, lost 24 Bishop’s and Berryman’s poems: how to lose, and loss in this book.

'Richard Jacob's anthology is one of the most refreshing and lively collections I have read in a long time. He has a direct (and often humorous) way of addressing his readers, by inviting them to taste both the literature and the critical approaches, to share in his delight at the feast laid before them with no risk of forcefeeding. Everybody will find something to delight them in this book.' - - Carol Fox, The Times Educational Supplement'an interesting and challenging resource for teachers and enthusiastic students.' - The English and Media Magazine'This book is essential reading: it takes an exciting journey through the history of English Literature. Richard Jacobs has selected juicy morsels then added significant commentary. It's 481 pages have already become part of my life. This book is highly recommended.' - Trevor Lockwood, Author.co.uk'All teachers of A level and undergraduate English courses, and their students, will find something of interest in this book. It is a hopeful signpost towards the future of post-16 English Studies.' - NATE'This series is an excellent example of the need within academia to encourage an awareness of theoretical issues in students.' - Will Slocombe, English