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The New Critical Idiom


About the Series

The New Critical Idiom is an invaluable series of introductory guides designed to meet the needs of today's students grappling with the complexities of modern critical terminology. Each book in the series provides:

  • A clear, explanatory guide to the use (and abuse) of the term
  • An original and distinctive overview by a leading literary and cultural critic
  • Helpful definitions of the boundaries between the literary and non-literary
  • Basic guidance for the introductory reader in how the term relates to the larger field of cultural representation

With a strong emphasis on clarity, lively debate and the widest possible breadth of examples, The New Critical Idiom is an indispensable guide to key topics in literary studies.

68 Series Titles

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Tragedy

Tragedy

1st Edition

By John Drakakis
August 16, 2023

Tragedy is one of the oldest and most resilient forms of narrative. Considering texts from ancient Greece to the present day, this comprehensive introduction shows how tragedy has been re-imagined and redefined throughout Western cultural history. Tragedy offers a concise history of tragedy tracing...

Fictionality

Fictionality

1st Edition

By Karen Petroski
April 20, 2023

Does fiction enhance reality, or threaten our sense of what is real? What, if anything, is special about experiencing fictional works and worlds? Today we speak casually of parallel universes and virtual reality; how much do we really know about what these phenomena involve? In Fictionality, Karen ...

Ecocriticism

Ecocriticism

3rd Edition

By Greg Garrard
March 29, 2023

Ecocriticism explores the ways in which we imagine and portray the relationship between humans and the environment across many areas of cultural production, including Romantic poetry, wildlife documentaries, climate models, the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, and novels by Margaret ...

Metafiction

Metafiction

1st Edition

By Yaël Schlick
October 26, 2022

Metafiction explores the great variety and effects of this popular genre and style, variously defined as a type of literature that philosophically questions itself, that repudiates the conventions of literary realism, that questions the relationship between fiction and reality, or that lies at the ...

Literary Geography

Literary Geography

1st Edition

By Sheila Hones
May 11, 2022

Literary Geography provides an introduction to work in the field, making the interdiscipline accessible and visible to students and academics working in literary studies and human geography, as well as related fields such as the geohumanities, place writing and geopoetics. Emphasising the long ...

Intertextuality

Intertextuality

3rd Edition

By Graham Allen
October 25, 2021

This successful introduction to intertextuality deftly introduces this crucial area and relates its significance to key theories and movements in the study of literature. The third edition is updated to include a brand new chapter, looking at intermediality, and how the study of intertextuality has...

Fantasy

Fantasy

1st Edition

By Lucie Armitt
March 20, 2020

Fantasy provides an invaluable and accessible guide to the study of this fascinating field. Covering literature, film, television, ballet, light opera and visual art and featuring a historical overview from Ovid to the Toy Story franchise, this book takes the reader through the key landmark ...

Children's Literature

Children's Literature

1st Edition

By Carrie Hintz
November 06, 2019

Children’s Literature is an accessible introduction to this engaging field. Carrie Hintz offers a defining conceptual overview of children’s literature that presents its competing histories, its cultural contexts, and the theoretical debates it has instigated. Positioned within the wider field of ...

Trauma

Trauma

1st Edition

By Lucy Bond, Stef Craps
October 24, 2019

Trauma has become a catchword of our time and a central category in contemporary theory and criticism. In this illuminating and accessible volume, Lucy Bond and Stef Craps: provide an account of the history of the concept of trauma from the late nineteenth century to the present day examine ...

Pastoral

Pastoral

2nd Edition

By Terry Gifford
October 30, 2019

Updated throughout, this new edition provides a clear and invaluable introduction to the study of pastoral. Terry Gifford traces the history of the genre from its classical origins through to contemporary writing and introduces the major writers and critical issues relating to pastoral. Gifford ...

Race

Race

1st Edition

By Martin Orkin, Alexa Alice Joubin
February 01, 2019

Race offers a compelling introduction to the study of ideas related to race throughout history. Its breadth of coverage, both geographically and temporally, provides readers with an expansive, global understanding of the term from the classical period onwards. This concise guide offers an overview ...

Satire

Satire

1st Edition

By John T. Gilmore
November 27, 2017

What is satire? How can we define it? Is it a weapon for radical change or fundamentally conservative? Is satire funny or cruel? Does it always need a target or victim? Combining thematic, theoretical and historical approaches, John T. Gilmore introduces and investigates the tradition of satire ...

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