THE CRITICAL FORUM

• Each volume of Textwise contains approximately 40 A4 pages, crammed with information.  Photocopies may be made for use by students of the purchasing school or college - invaluable both for classroom use and for examination revision.  Separate sections enable the resource to be used in stages and selectively.
• Textwise stimulates students, by making knowledge and critical methodology both accessible and exciting.
• Don’t confuse this series with other "Revision Aids".  Textwise is not for the faint- hearted.  It is challenging, witty, idiosyncratic and provocative.
• Students are introduced to the most recent and illuminating methods of evaluating literature in context, and are encouraged to argue rather than summarize or paraphrase.
• Concepts are clearly defined and demonstrated by application to the text.  There is plenty of valuable detailed analysis.
• Each Textwise volume only £12.99.

Felicity Currie has been a university lecturer all her adult life, most recently at Salford and Manchester.  Her publications range over a wide area: from Anglo-Saxon to twentieth century literature.  She was an assistant chief examiner in English Literature at A level for a major board: so she knows the qualities and techniques, which are vital for real examination success.  More importantly, Felicity Currie is an experienced lecturer to sixth form students.  Her audiences enjoy her clarity of approach, her insight, her plain speaking and her infectious humour.

ATWOOD: THE HANDMAID’S TALE
Felicity Currie's searing analysis of Margaret Atwood's novel was the first in this remarkable series - an account which was so striking that we simply had to publish it.  Topics covered include the relationship between narrator and narrative, the impact of the 'Epilogue', problems of interpreting Gilead, genre and gender, 'The Ceremony' and flying the flag of resistance: nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
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BLAKE: SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE
Full justice can only be done to Blake’s Songs if they are seen in the context which makes them the daring revolutionary poems they are.  Centred on detailed analyses of the Songs, this volume considers Blake as artisan and radical dissenter; art, religion and politics; education and revolution; illustrations and explanations of the dynamic idea of ‘Contraries’.
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BRONTË: WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Not just the thrill of a forbidden, doomed romance - Wuthering Heights is a story set in its full historical context, a problematic interrelationship which questions the very foundations of human society: family, marriage, endemic violence, law, property, wealth and exploitive power.  This Textwise volume aims to examine afresh the daring questions relentlessly raised by the novel.
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CHAUCER: THE MILLER’S TALE AND THE MERCHANT’S TALE
This volume discusses each Tale separately, in depth and in detail.  It has a common Introduction which gives a full and exciting context for the scope of the comic genre in the Middle Ages.  It is this which enables us to see Chaucer’s sophisticationand innovations: beautiful comic plots with rich and surprising ramifications.
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CHAUCER: THE WIFE OF BATH’S PROLOGUE AND TALE
Felicity Currie asks, 'Is there a woman in this text?'  She considers the Wife of Bath as a patriarchal construct and considers the texts and contexts from which this construct is drawn (all hostile to women).  Other topics include St Jerome and The Romance of the Rose, the case for a genuinely female discourse, gender and sexual politics, and the Tale as narrative adventure.
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CAROL ANN DUFFY: SELECTED POEMS (with particular emphasis on Mean Time)
What makes Duffy’s poetry special is its extraordinarily wide range and its empathy with people of different classes, different age groups and both genders.  Such multiplicity is matched by a fine control and flexibility of poetic forms.  This volume gives students the know-how to analyse form and content together.
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MARLOWE: DOCTOR FAUSTUS
Felicity Currie's startling new consideration of the play focuses on Faustus as an Elizabethan spy - the hazardous occupation of his creator.  Already one ofour best-sellers, the volume explores all the contexts that Marlowe encodes in the text - theological controversy, political machinations, and scientific and philosophical ideas that run counter to orthodoxy - as well as investigating the subversive effects of his comedy.
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MORRISON: BELOVED
This volume is invaluable to teachers and students seeking authoritative criticism on this disturbing novel.  Felicity Currie looks at the importance of reader participation, the meaning and function of 'Rememory', why it's important for Beloved to come back, language as Beloved's main innovative strategy, Beloved and sources, and the true and full identity of Beloved.
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POETRY OF WORLD WAR I
Why was poetry considered important as propaganda?  We need to understand Establishment poems (by Hardy, Kipling) and the impact of poems by iconised ‘heroes’ (Brooke, Grenfell) in order to recognise what constitutes more radical, oppositional poetry (largely unpublished).  The fullest sections (on Sorely, Rosenberg, Owen, Sassoon), offer a reassessment which shows that ‘protest’ is too simplistic a concept to characterise the irresolvable conflicts that produced these exceptional poems.
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SHAKESPEARE: HAMLET
This volume shows fresh light on this most analysed of Shakespeare's plays, making the case against Freud's Oedipal Hamlet.  Felicity Currie argues the importance of seeing vengeance, madness and rebellion in the full historical context of power politics.  She asks what legitimises action if to be means to kill, and what the ghost betrays.  Other topics include the significance of Fortinbras, Hamlet as The Mousetrap, patriarchal family and state, the problematised roles of Gertrude and Ophelia, and Hamlet as Carnivalesque Tragedy.
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SHAKESPEARE: KING LEAR
This volume puts King Lear firmly into its historical context, discussing King James's idea of absolute power, Lear's division of land and its consequences, and what happens when the powerful become poor.  Among other topics considered are the demonisation of Goneril and Reagan, the tragic double plot of Lear and Gloucester, and Lear as Fool.
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SHAKESPEARE: OTHELLO
Our best-selling volume starts by considering Othello as a perfect tragedy, putting the play into the context of Shakespeare's England (where racism was legitimised).  There are discussions of Iago as discourse, the patriarchal family and the patriarchal state, a love that dare not speak its name, tragic plot-structure and the talismanic handkerchief,and revenge tragedy.
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SHAKESPEARE: THE TEMPEST
The Tempest has often been seen as presenting a kind of utopia Prospero finally achieves the promise of a "brave new world" in which the corrupt and violent structures of the ‘old’ (but all too contemporary) Europe will be changed for morebenign ones.  But there is a stronger and more exciting argument against this dubious romanticism: not only in the text itself, but in the multiple contexts with which it so vibrantly (dangerously and possibly) resonates. 
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MARY SHELLEY: FRANKENSTEIN
Not just a horror story, but a profound and sophisticated narrative witha huge range of reference (social, literary, scientific, historical).  Here, for the first time, are crucial extracts from the books that educated the Monster, encouraging a re-evaluation of the Monster’s role and of the revolutionary scope of the novel itself.
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WILLIAMS: A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
This volume considers the two plays separately.  Topics considered on Streetcar include the title's appeal and implications, theatre as magic realism, areas of conflict, tragedy in our world, secrets and lies, and the tragic impact of scenes 10 and  11.  On Cat, Felicity Currie discusses fierce satire and the grandeur of tragedy, surface realism versus symbolic truths,  'working like a nigger', and the play's big problem - which version of Act III.
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CRITICAL APPRECIATION (Two Volumes £24.99)
These two companion volumes - Prose (including Drama) and Poetry - provide the technical know-how, and the practice, which will enable students to approach unseen critical analysis with confidence and flair.  Skills acquired here will give them knowledge and analytical ability which will be of enormous value in their study of any literary texts - and, where relevant, will help them to score highly in Critical Appreciation papers.
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Click here for Sample Text - Prose