The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London

Lawrence Manley

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780521897525
• eBook ISBN: 9781107481749
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

London has provided the setting and inspiration for a host of literary works in English, from canonical masterpieces to the popular and ephemeral. Drawing upon a variety of methods and materials, the essays in this volume explore the London of Langland and the Peasants' Rebellion, of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan stage, of Pepys and the Restoration coffee house, of Dickens and Victorian wealth and poverty, of Conrad and the Empire, of Woolf and the wartime Blitz, of Naipaul and postcolonial immigration, and of contemporary globalism. Contributions from historians, art historians, theorists and media specialists as well as leading literary scholars exemplify current approaches to genre, gender studies, book history, performance studies and urban studies. In showing how the tradition of English literature is shaped by representations of London, this volume also illuminates the relationship between the literary imagination and the society of one of the world's greatest cities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO THE LITERATURE OF LONDON
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• CONTRIBUTORS
• CHRONOLOGY
• Introduction
• 1 Images of London in medieval English literature
• 2 London and the early modern stage
• 3 London and the early modern book
• 4 London and poetry to 1750
• 5 Staging London in the Restoration and eighteenth century
• 6 London and narration in the long eighteenth century
• 7 London and nineteenth-century poetry
• 8 London in the Victorian novel
• 9 London in Victorian visual culture
• 10 London in poetry since 1900
• 11 London and modern prose, 1900–1950
• 12 Immigration and postwar London literature
• 13 Writing London in the twenty-first century
• 14 Inner London
• GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
• INDEX