John Peck

If you are new to linguistics as a subject and beginning a course at undergraduate or sixth-form level, How to Study Linguistics is the ideal introduction and companion to your studies. · Covers all the core areas of linguistic study, with chapters discussing strategies for studying phonology, syntax and semantics· Explores other branches of linguistics such as sociolinguistics, stylistics, and psycholinguistics· Includes a chapter on writing linguistics essays and a detailed glossary to aid learning and revision· Second edition includes new material designed to help the more advanced readerHow to Study Linguistics is both a guide to current ideas about linguistics and a refreshingly practical text book. It will not only develop your skills as a language student, but will also make an often complex and daunting subject easy to understand, and a pleasure to study.

This third edition, which contains updated material, additional discussion of critical terms and approaches and a revised further reading list, is a guide to the study of English literature.

John Peck is a member of the remarkable generation of poets, including Robert Hass, Robert Pinsky, and James McMichael, who studied with Yvor Winters at Stanford in the 1960s. His recent work expresses a sharp sense of vulnerability and of the tenacity of human life, both natural and moral.

This book - for a decade the most highly regarded general introduction to Shakespeare - offers students a clear and practical method of approaching a Shakespeare play. This major new edition has been thoroughly revised and expanded to include five new chapters that illustrate the nature and impact of the new approaches to Shakespeare that have swept through literary studies in recent years: structuralism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, feminism, new historicism and cultural materialism.

How to Study a Novel has long been established as the one book about the novel that every student of literature at school or university needs to read. In a series of clearly written, eminently practical chapters, John Peck takes the reader through a set of logical steps that show him how to respond to, interpret and develop his own view of a novel and how to present that response in an effective essay. This thoroughly revised and expanded Second Edition has three new chapters taking this process one step further, showing how to make use of the new critical thinking that has swept through literary criticism in recent years.

Practical criticism underlies everything students of English literature do. It is a way of reading the text closely, but with a grasp of the larger issues involved. This book is a practical, step-by-step guide which shows the student how to gain a sense of what a poem or passage of prose or drama is about, how to analyse it and how to build a successful essay. Easy to read and uncluttered by technical vocabulary, it will prove an invaluable resource for any student.

The new critical approaches that have swept through literary criticism in recent years have transformed our sense of David Copperfield and Hard Times. There is now a new kind of understanding of how both novels emerge from and relate to the 1850's. In collecting together the most original and exciting, innovative work on David Copperfield and Hard Times, this New Casebook offers the reader an excellent and unique introduction to current critical thinking about Dickens.

Middlemarch, by common consent one of the most important novels in English, has always stimulated outstanding criticism. Over the past twenty years or so, it has also become a favourite novel for consideration by critics wishing to develop and explore new ways of looking at the novel form. The excitement and originality of such criticism is reflected fully in this volume, which presents a whole range of current ways of looking at Middlemarch. The collection as a whole, along with a clear introduction and a guide to Further Reading, also provides a fascinating sense of how criticism of the novel is a continuing debate, as critics take up and dispute received views - in the process, offering us an endlessly renewed and fresh sense of Middlemarch. The collection as a whole, along with a clear introduction and a guide to Further Reading, also provides a fascinating sense of how criticism of the novel is a continuing debate, as critics take up and dispute received views - in the process, offering us an endlessly renewed and fresh sense of Middlemarch.

This practical reference for university and senior high school students shows how to read, understand and analyze poetry. Included are sections on narrative poetry and writing essays.