Literature

Literature,the latest volume in the highly successfulNew Critical Idiomseries, is at once a compact mine of information about the development and more recent discrediting of the concept of "literature," and a reflection on the contemporary nature, place and function of what the literary might mean for us today. Comprehensive in scope, it offers a concise history of the consitution of a canonic concept of "literature" from its earliest origins to the orthodoxies that occurred through the later nineteenth-century to the middle of the twentieth. It also traces its dismantling from the late-60s onward. Finally, the book attemps to recuperate a notion of "the literary" by way of a series of readings of diverse texts. It is an excellent primer for anyone who loves the written word.

Peter Widdowson is Professor of Literature at Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education.