Contents
Preface
TEACHING LITERATURE IN CONTEXT AND CONTEXT IN LITERATURE: Introduction - what are we doing here?
Assessing literature in context
The case for close reading
'Context' in context
CLOSE READING AND CONTEXT - WORDSWORTH'S SONNET 'UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE'
QUESTIONS OF CONTEXT: POETRY IN CONTEXT: Shelley and Smith - 'Ozymandias'? whose 'Ozymandias'?
Coleridge's Great Escape - 'This Lime Tree Bower My Prison'
Misleading contexts - TS Eliot and 'Usk'
Form as context - when is a sonnet not a sonnet?
SHAKESPEAREAN CONTEXTS: Teaching Shakespeare - 1908 seen from 2008
Venetian contexts - Othello and The Merchant of Venice
Tongue-tied? The silent speaker in Shakespeare's sonnets
On the watch in Shakespeare - Twelfth Night, Henry V, Richard II
CONTEXTS AND THE NOVEL: Too tall? 'Handsome' in Jane Austen (Emma, Persuasion)
Ways of seeing - teaching new texts (Hilary Mantel, A Change of Climate
Joe Treasure, The Male Gaze)
Englishness in the contemporary novel (Julian Barnes, England, England
David Lodge, Nice Work
Zadie Smith, White Teeth)
Film and image as context (Ian McEwan, Atonement
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)
NON-FICTION PROSE IN CONTEXT: Essays and blogs (Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter, Mary Beard)
Travel writing - In search of England? (Rupert Brooke, Letters from America)
CONFLICT AND CALAMITY AS CONTEXTS IN LITERATURE: The Literature of War ('The stage was set': concert parties and the theatre of war
'The Lords of No Man's Land': memorialising the Great War)
From the Tsunami to Saddam Hussein (Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 ¿ Chapters
Charles Lamb, Richard Aldington, Primo Levi)
MOVING ON: FROM 'ENGLISH LITERATURE' TO 'ENGLISH STUDIES': Context in transition - what universities want
Poetry and translation - more questions of context
Teaching to the test - context in unseen examinations
Conclusion
RESOURCES - PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATIONS, WEBSITES, READING
Acknowledgements
Index
