The Discerning Reader

This compendium is a Christian response to the major controversies and some of the key texts with which undergraduates and postgraduates in English studies are grappling. The contributors, many of them working in major universities, examine some of the most important issues to emerge from the surge of interest in critical theory over the last twenty years, such as the question of canon, interpretative communities, reading strategies, feminist perspectives. These are examined from the standpoint of a Christian worldview. There follows a series of essays on individual texts, including the perennially fascinating question of the relationship of Shakespeare and Christianity, how to read Paradise lost, romantic poetry, Jude the obscure, and studies of two modern novels. Students of literature will find help in responding to literary approaches actively hostile to Christianity or in competition with it. Christian readings of key texts provide working models of a poetic that is deeply rooted in the Christian worldview, aware of modern literary theory and sensitive to the texts themselves. Contributors include; Valentine Cunningham, Fellow and Tutor in English Literature, Corpus Christi College, Oxford; Elizabeth Clarke, Senior Lecturer in English, Westminster College, Oxford; Rowland Cotterill, Lecturer in English, University of Warwick; Elisabeth Jay, Head of English, Westminster College, Oxford; John Schad, Lecturer in English, University of Loughborough; John Watson, Professor of English, University of Durham.