English Literature: Questions for Consideration and Discussion
What have been the key texts for creating our images of Britain? Jane Austen for our idea of village life, Dickens for London, Hardy for rural England...?Do works of children s literature date more quickly than adult ones?Is it useful to make a distinction between popular literary genres--detective story, science fiction, spy thriller, chick lit--and the literary novel?What should be the limits to our definition of literature? What sort of literary qualities can we find in non-fictional genres such as the essay, the travel book, the history book, even a work of political theory or natural history?Is our sense of the role of poetry now confined to the private sphere (love poetry, nature poetry, the poetry of personal memory) whereas it used to be a more public form (political poetry, satire, war poetry)?Is there a tension between seeing Shakespeare s plays in performance and reading them as literature?
