Introduction to Literature

"Literature is any body of written works and typically refers to writing considered to be an art form or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage."

" this book tries to show the value of reading and studying literature, even earlier literature. It shows students, some of whom will themselves become teachers, that literature actually has something to say to them."

"While Dickens used to be seen as a writer of shallow and sentimental children’s literature, as the prolific caterer to the new market of mass literature, this collection of essays shows that Dickens was not only a reader of high-brow literature, but also expected his readers to understand them in the context of contemporary scientific and economic debates. Covering a wide range of writers – from Sidney, Shakespeare, Cervantes to Swift, Smollett and Bulwer-Lytton – Dickens’s novels reveal a multi-layered cosmos and supply their readers with richly woven nets of intertextuality."

It is intended as a high-school and college-level introduction to the central concepts of narrative theory that will aid students in developing their competence not only in analyzing and interpreting short stories and novels, but also in writing them.