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 Brontë’sJane Eyre,
e-readers and kindles, First World War poetry and prose, steampunk, and Robert Macfarlane’sThe 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.
