Close Reading

Close Reading addresses the long nineteenth century and welcomes quality book manuscripts covering a wide range of topics from early William Wordsworth to James Joyce. The series aims at placing interpretation and analysis back at the centre of literary studies, and therefore invites manuscripts that focus on literary texts themselves. After decades of theoretical approaches entailing the gradual marginalisation of literary texts, Close Reading foregrounds innovative, cutting-edge textual analysis and illuminating critical writing which concentrates on in-depth interpretations in the context of the texts’ culture. The philosophy informing this book series is to show that working on texts is a lively practice apt to open up and retrieve layers of meaning and knowledge.

The long nineteenth century is an apposite period for this particular approach: it starts with the Romantic period as the point of origin for literary self-reflection and ends with the questioning and breaking-apart of literary form in Modernist avant-garde movements. By having the literature itself again take centre stage, placing interpretation and analysis back into the heart of literary studies, the series offers a platform for a variety of approaches ranging from hermeneutic interpretations to philosophical readings of literature as a self-reflective aesthetic practice.

General Editor: Norbert Lennartz (University of Vechta) // Editoral Board: Ralf Haekel (University of Göttingen) / Sabine Coelsch-Foisner (University of Salzburg), Barbara Schaff (University of Göttingen) // Advisory Board: Fred Burwick (University of California, Los Angeles) / Lilla Maria Crisafulli (Università di Bologna) / Ian Duncan (University of California, Berkeley) / Holly Furneaux (University of Cardiff) / Denise Gigante (Stanford University) / Nicholas Halmi (University College, University of Oxford) / Richard Lansdown (Cook University Cairns) / Anne K. Mellor (University of California, Los Angeles) / Tom Mole (University of Edinburgh) / Michael O`Neill (University of Durham) / Francesca Orestano (Università degli Studi di Milano) / Nicholas Roe (University of St. Andrews) / Jeremy Tambling (University of Manchester) / Richard Marggraf Turley (University of Aberystwyth) / Nathalie Vanfasse (Université Aix-Marseille) / Duncan Wu (Georgetown University)