New Critical Thinking : Criticism to Come

Following a scene-setting Introduction which reflects on the state of 'theory' today, the 11 chapters in this volume introduce new areas of critical thinking which go beyond the standard 'isms': Literary Reading in a Digital Age; Critical Making in the Digital Humanities; Thing Theory; Memory Work and Criticism; Body, Objects, Technology; Criticism and 'The Animal'; Multimodality and Linguistic Approaches to Literary Study; Critical and Creative Practice: Conditions for Success in the Writing Workshop; Affect Theory; Spectrality; Critical Climate Change. A final rounding off chapter on Historicising presents debates around historically oriented criticism, including a 'round table' among the contributors. Each chapter also provides a critical 'case study' of a text or texts, including poetry writing guides, a Seamus Heaney poem, film adaptations of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre , e-readers and kindles, First World War poetry and prose, steampunk, and Robert Macfarlane's The Old Ways . From 'Thing Theory' to animal theory, multimodality to film adaptation, and from acts of reading in a digital age to the creative writing workshop, the volume reflects a radical reorientation in critical modes of thinking.