'Thinking Literature across Continents' finds Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller—two thinkers from different continents, cultures, training, and critical perspectives—debating and reflecting upon what literature is and why it matters. Ghosh and Miller do not attempt to formulate a joint theory of literature; rather, they allow their different backgrounds and lively disagreements to stimulate…
The ability to construct a nuanced narrative or complex character in the constrained form of the short story has sometimes been seen as the ultimate test of an author's creativity. Yet during the time when the short story was at its most popular—the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—even the greatest writers followed strict generic conventions that were far from subtle. This ex…
[...] a volume clearly focused on the specific topic of literature within Bourdieu's work is certainly timely. Speller's volume aims not only to provide an account of Bourdieu's main theories and analyses of literature, but also has the polemical aim of refuting critics who suggest that Bourdieu's view of literature, grounded as it is in an analysis of the social relations of the cultural field…