One of literature's greatest gifts is its portrayal of realistically drawn characters--human beings in whom we can recognize motivations and emotions. In Imagined Human Beings, Bernard J. Paris explores the inner conflicts of some of literature's most famous characters, using Karen Horney's psychoanalytic theories to understand the behavior of these characters as we would the behavior of real people.When realistically drawn characters are understood in psychological...

On 14 June 2017, a fire broke out in the Grenfell Tower, a high-rise block of flats in North Kensington, London. The tower, clad in cheap but highly flammable cladding, burned rapidly, tragically killing seventy-two people in the UK's deadliest residential fire since the Second World War. A subsequent inquiry into the fire found that a host of failures on both a governmental and private sector level were responsible for the structural inadequacies that rendered the Grenfell Tower – and man...

**Winner of the 2020 Sunday Times/University of Warwick Young Writer of the Year Award**Jay Bernard's extraordinary debut is a fearless exploration of the New Cross Fire of 1981, a house fire at a birthday party in which thirteen young black people were killed.Dubbed the 'New Cross Massacre', the fire was initially believed to be a racist attack, and the indifference with which the tragedy was met by the state triggered a new era o...

Brought to you by Penguin.This Penguin Classic is performed by Lesley Manville (winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress and known for Phantom Thread and Mum**), Derek Jacobi (winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor and known for** Gladiator and Gosford Park**), Michael Balogun (known for** National Theatre Live: Macbeth**), Jay Bernard (writer o...

Brought To You By Penguin.The audiobook edition of Surge, written and read by Jay Bernard.Winner of The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2020.*Winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2018*Jay Bernard's powerful debut is a queer exploration of the black British archive, tracing a line between two significant events in recent British history: the New Cross Massacre of 1981 in which thi...

Learn the basic techniques every successful playwright knows! Amid the hundreds of "how-to" books out there, there have been very few which attempted to analyze the mysteries of play construction. Lajos Egri's classic, The Art of Dramatic Writing, does just that, with instruction that can be applied equally well to a short story, novel, or screenplay.Examining a play from the inside out, Egri starts with the heart of any drama: its characters. All good dra...

In "Aspects of the Novel," E. M. Forster presents a compelling and analytical exploration of the fundamental elements that constitute the art of the novel. Written in 1927, the book offers a critical examination of narrative techniques, character development, plot structure, and thematic depth, employing a conversational yet authoritative style that invites both scholars and casual readers to engage with its insights. Forster's clear delineation of the 'five aspects'—story, plot, character...

"A feminist classic."—Judith Shulevitz, New York Times Book Review“A pivotal book, one of those after which we will never think the same again.”—Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Washington Post Book WorldA pathbreaking book of literary criticism is now reissued with a new introduction by Lisa Appignanesi that speaks to how The Madwoman in the Attic set the groundwork for subsequent generations of scholars writing about women ...

A literary master’s entertaining guide to reading with deeper insight, better understanding, and greater pleasureWhat makes a work of literature good or bad? How freely can the reader interpret it? Could a nursery rhyme like Baa Baa Black Sheep be full of concealed loathing, resentment, and aggression? In this accessible, delightfully entertaining book, Terry Eagleton addresses these intriguing questions and a host of others. How to Read Literature

Why do we read literature and how do we judge it? C. S. Lewis's classic An Experiment in Criticism springs from the conviction that literature exists for the joy of the reader and that books should be judged by the kind of reading they invite. He argues that "good reading," like moral action or religious experience, involves surrender to the work in hand and a process of entering fully into the opinions of others: "in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain...

The first edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction transformed the criticism of fiction and soon became a classic in the field. One of the most widely used texts in fiction courses, it is a standard reference point in advanced discussions of how fictional form works, how authors make novels accessible, and how readers recreate texts, and its concepts and terms—such as "the implied author," "the postulated reader," and "the unreliable narrator"—have become part of the standard critical l...

Wayne Booth transformed the study of fiction in the twentieth century and wrote some of the most influential and engaging criticism of our time. In What Every Novelist Needs to Know about Narrators, Booth tackles one of the most difficult issues writers of fiction face: the choice of which narrative approach to take in their work. With trademark Booth aplomb, he articulates the methods behind dramatization, character development, and point of view that are indispensable for succes...