World and Time: Teaching Literature in Context(Cambridge Contexts in Literature)

Critical introductions to a range of literary topics and genres. Providing an invaluable resource for any teacher of English: it both presents a fascinating overview of teaching Literature today, and offers a valuable and practical guide to anyone teaching advanced courses in the subject. The book asks whether it is possible to combine the recent focus on the contextual study of literary texts with a continuing emphasis on close reading and discusses the key literary skills that universities expect students of literature to have developed. The book demonstrates surprising ways in which the study of context can give a new and sharper focus to the words on the page.

Table of Contents:
Contents; Preface; TEACHING LITERATURE IN CONTEXT AND CONTEXT IN LITERATURE: Introduction - what are we doing here?; Assessing literature in context; The case for close reading; 'Context' in context; CLOSE READING AND CONTEXT - WORDSWORTH's SONNET 'UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE'; QUESTIONS OF CONTEXT: POETRY IN CONTEXT: Shelley and Smith - 'Ozymandias' whose 'Ozymandias'?; Coleridge's Great Escape - 'This Lime Tree Bower My Prison'; Misleading contexts - TS Eliot and 'Usk'; Form as context - when is a sonnet not a sonnet?; SHAKESPEAREAN CONTEXTS: Teaching Shakespeare - 1908 seen from 2008; Venetian contexts - Othello and The Merchant of Venice; Tongue-tied? The silent speaker in Shakespeare's sonnets; On the watch in Shakespeare - Twelfth Night, Henry V, Richard II; CONTEXTS AND THE NOVEL: Too tall? 'Handsome' in Jane Austen (Emma, Persuasion); Ways of seeing - teaching new texts (Hilary Mantel, A Change of Climate; Joe Treasure, The Male Gaze); Englishness in the contemporary novel (Julian Barnes, England, England; David Lodge, Nice Work; Zadie Smith, White Teeth); Film and image as context (Ian McEwan, Atonement; Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities); NON-FICTION PROSE IN CONTEXT: Essays and blogs (Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter, Mary Beard); Travel writing - In search of England? (Rupert Brooke, Letters from America); CONFLICT AND CALAMITY AS CONTEXTS IN LITERATURE: The Literature of War ('The stage was set': concert parties and the theatre of war; 'The Lords of No Man's Land': memorialising the Great War); From the Tsunami to Saddam Hussein (Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters; Charles Lamb, Richard Aldington, Primo Levi); MOVING ON: FROM 'ENGLISH LITERATURE' TO 'ENGLISH STUDIES': Context in transition - what universities want; Poetry and translation - more questions of context; Teaching to the test - context in unseen examinations; Conclusion; RESOURCES - PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS, WEBSITES, READING; Acknowledgements; Index