Literary Politics identifies and debates competing definitions of 'English Studies' as an academic subject, celebrates the diversity of contemporary literary studies, and demonstrates the ways in which a range of literary texts can be understood as politically engaged, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Introduction: The Politics of Literature and the Literature of Politics; Deborah Philips 1. Literature and Politics; Stuart Laing 2. Shakespeare v The BNP; Adam Hansen 3. Roaring Boys and Weeping Men: Radical Masculinity in Webster's The Duchess of Malfi; Kate Aughterson 4. Having the last word: World War I fictions as counter-narratives; Zacharoula Christopoulou 5. 'Show an Affirming Flame': writers and readers in modern dark times; Rosalind Brunt 6. Literature, Politics And History; Paddy Maguire 7. The Politics of Nostalgia in the Rural English Novel; Dominic Head 8. (Re)Writing the 1984-5 UK Miners' Strike; Katy Shaw 9. Can the environment be saved? Post-apocalyptic children's novels of the 1980s; Dave Simpson 10. The politics of enhancement: the last days of the English Subject Centre; Ben Knights Bibliography Index
