Veering: A Theory of Literature

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Brilliantly traces a strange but compelling 'literary turn'
Exploring images of swerving, loss of control, digressing and deviating, Veering provides new critical perspectives on all major literary genres: the novel, poetry, drama, the short story and the essay, as well as 'creative writing'. Royle works with insights from Lewis Carroll, Freud, Adorno, Raymond Williams, Edward Said, Deleuze, Cixous and Derrida. With wit and irony he investigates 'veering' in the writings of Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Melville, Hardy, Proust, Lawrence, Bowen, J.H. Prynne and many others.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Series Editor's Preface (p. vi)
• Advertisement (p. viii)
• 1 Casting Off (p. 1)
• 2 Reading a Novel (p. 13)
• 3 Reading a Poem (p. 34)
• 4 Drama: An Aside (p. 54)
• 5 The Essay: A Note (On Being Late) (p. 61)
• 6 On Critical and Creative Writing (p. 67)
• 7 The Literary Turn (p. 92)
• 8 Veerer: Where Ghosts Live (p. 119)
• 9 Veerer: Reading Melville's 'Bartleby' (p. 151)
• A Small Case of Civil Disobedience (p. 175)
• 10 Veering with Lawrence (p. 177)
• Appendix: A Note on Nodism (p. 210)
• Index (p. 214)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

In considering "veering" as a theory of literature, novelist and short-story writer Nicholas Royle (Manchester Metropolitan Univ., UK) looks at variety of genres--novel, poetry, drama, the essay, the short story, and critical and creative writing--and analyzes the writings of many canonical writers, among them Montaigne, Coleridge, Nabokov, Freud, Cixous, Blanchot, Barthes, Nancy, and Derrida. The author studies what he calls the literary turn and explores the relationship between the environment, theory, critical writing, and the literary, thus revealing different ways of encountering and understanding literature. By suggesting a different kind of reading experience, the author proposes new ways of theorizing and thinking critically about literature, and he highlights the importance of creative writing in criticism. This unique work appears in Edinburgh's "Frontiers of Theory" series, which offers innovative approaches to various aspects of literary thinking. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers/faculty. E. A. Vanborre Gordon College