Literary / Liberal Entanglements: Toward a Literary History for the Twenty-First Century

In Literary/Liberal Entanglements, Corrinne Harol and Mark Simpson bring together ten essays by scholars from a wide range of fields in English studies in order to interrogate the complex, entangled relationship between the history of literature and the history of liberalism. The volume has three goals: to investigate important episodes in the entanglement of literary history and liberalism; to analyze the impact of this entanglement on the secular and democratic projects of modernity; and thereby to reassess the dynamics of our neoliberal present. The volume is organized into a series of paired essays, with each pair investigating a concept central to both literature and liberalism: acting, socializing, discriminating, recounting, and culturing. Collectively, the essays demonstrate the vivid capacity of literary study writ large to reckon with, imagine, and materialize durative accounts of history and politics. Literary/Liberal Entanglements models a method of literary history for the twenty-first century.

About the Author

Corrinne Harol is an associate professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. Mark Simpson is an associate professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.