File(s) not publicly available
Worth fighting with
book
posted on 2023-06-08, 07:47 authored by Vincent QuinnVia its setting and plot, Worth Fighting With dramatizes some of the most urgent concerns in contemporary English Studies, notably the splintering of the discipline into discrete areas of enquiry; the resultant methodological conflicts between `theory¿ and `literary criticism¿, and; the impact of new research and management cultures. Thus, the novel engages with the same questions that emerge in non-fiction explorations of the academic humanities such as Bill Readings¿s The University in Ruins (Harvard UP, 1997) and Derek Bok¿s Universities in the Marketplace (Stanford UP, 2004). Thematically, the book is concerned both with questions of literary value and with the larger issue of whether literature (or other forms of cultural expression, including literary criticism) can really produce social or personal change. In particular, the novel asks its reader to re-evaluate existing attitudes to `minor¿ literature. However this is not pursued in the terms set out by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 1986). Instead, Worth Fighting With explores the potential of a domestic tradition, as represented by writers such as Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor, Angus Wilson and Margaret Drabble. In doing so, the book also stages the divisions between urban and non-metropolitan versions of `Englishness¿ ¿ a move that complicates the very idea of `English¿ literature.
History
Publication status
- Published
Publisher
Harrington Park PressPages
224.0Place of publication
New YorkISBN
9781560236726Department affiliated with
- English Publications
Full text available
- No
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2012-02-06Usage metrics
Categories
No categories selectedKeywords
Licence
Exports
RefWorks
BibTeX
Ref. manager
Endnote
DataCite
NLM
DC