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RR 2016/049 A Companion to British Literature Edited by Robert Demaria, Heesok Chang and Samantha Zacher Wiley Blackwell Malden, MA and Oxford 2014 4 vols. ISBN 978 0 470 65604 4 (print); ISBN 978 1 118 82733 8 (online) £450 $660 (print) Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture no. 84 Available online through the Wiley Online Library at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9781118827338 contact publisher for pricing information
Keywords Literature, United Kingdom
Review DOI 10.1108/RR-10-2015-0247
This four-volume companion discusses British literature from medieval times up until the year 2000. The general introduction discusses the difficulties in defining both "British" and "literature" explaining that the meaning of both has not remained stable, having different meanings at different times. Political and geographical changes over these periods have changed the notion of what British is. The British were a Celtic people that were invaded and occupied by the Romans and then by Germanic forces speaking a language that came to be called English. Calling it the English language does not give the term stability because English itself is such a flexible and ever-changing concept, varying in the huge number of communities that speak it worldwide and within the British archipelago itself, largely due to the invading and occupying peoples over the centuries developing their own versions of the language. The meaning of the term literature has also varied over time, its early meaning defined as almost anything written down in an organized fashion, such as scientific writing, travel accounts, legal documents, together with what we would call literature today, poetry and romance.
These four volumes present essays by 100 scholars. The editors state that no one book today would be able to provide everything one needs to...