Reading Fiction: Opening the Text
eBook - PDF

Reading Fiction: Opening the Text

  1. 180 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Reading Fiction: Opening the Text

About this book

In what ways does the opening of a novel relate to the narrative that unfolds from it? What are the different approaches to close reading a page of prose fiction? How does reading a text for a second time affect our understanding of the significance of its opening? In this unique book, Peter Childs discusses the opening lines of 24 widely-studied literary texts from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. These analyses amount to both an overview of modes of fiction over the last 300 years and also a guide to techniques of close reading. The extracts are taken from the work of novelists ranging from Jane Austen to Salman Rushdie. This stimulating and illuminating book will be a useful text for undergraduates studying the novel and involved in critical appreciation and close textual analysis. Texts discussed: Robinson Crusoe, Tristram Shandy, Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, Silas Marner, Tess of the D'urbervilles, The Turn of the Screw, Heart of Darkness, The Good Soldier, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, The Life and Death of Harriet Frean, A Passage to India, Mrs Dalloway, Brave New World, The Road to Wigan Pier, Goodbye to Berlin, Under the Volcano, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Bloody Chamber, Shame and The Buddha of Suburbia.

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Yes, you can access Reading Fiction: Opening the Text by Peter Childs in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & English Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Bloomsbury Academic
Year
2001
Print ISBN
9780333801345
eBook ISBN
9781137081087
Edition
1
Topic
Literature
Subtopic
English Literary Criticism
Index
Literature

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Preface: Open and Close
  8. Acknowledgements
  9. Introducing the Text
  10. 1 Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)
  11. 2 Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759–67)
  12. 3 Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
  13. 4 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
  14. 5 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847)
  15. 6 Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
  16. 7 Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)
  17. 8 George Eliot, Silas Marner (1861)
  18. 9 Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891)
  19. 10 Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898)
  20. 11 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899–1902)
  21. 12 Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)
  22. 13 James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
  23. 14 May Sinclair, The Life and Death of Harriett Frean (1922) 98
  24. 15 E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924)
  25. 16 Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)
  26. 17 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
  27. 18 George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
  28. 19 Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (1939)
  29. 20 Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano (1947)
  30. 21 Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)
  31. 22 Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (1979)
  32. 23 Salman Rushdie, Shame (1983)
  33. 24 Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia (1990)
  34. Glossary
  35. Index