About

A program committed to imaginative, interdisciplinary, and theoretical engagement with anglophone literatures in all their historical, formal, generic, and global diversity. More

News & Events

New Faculty

Read about our three new hires in Literature: Tyler Bickford, Imani Owens, and Autumn Womack. More >

News Events
John Twyning’s new book

John Twyning’s new book, Forms of English History in Literature, Landscape, and Architecture, has been published as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Language, Discourse, Society series. (Nov. 2012)

New Senior Thesis Option

Explore the New Senior Thesis Option for Literature Majors

News Events
Courtney Weikle-Mills’s new book

Courtney Weikle-Mills’s new book, Imaginary Citizens: Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640-1868, has just been published by Johns Hopkins UP. (Nov. 2012)

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Recent Faculty Books

The Nation Writ Small: African Fictions and Feminisms, 1958–1988
The Nation Writ Small: African Fictions and Feminisms, 1958–1988
Susan Andrade
Impure Worlds: The Institution of Literature in the Age of the Novel
Impure Worlds: The Institution of Literature in the Age of the Novel
Jonathan Arac
Poetry Against Torture: Criticism, History and the Human
Poetry Against Torture: Criticism, History and the Human
Paul Bové
A More Conservative Place: Intellectual Culture in the Bush Era
A More Conservative Place: Intellectual Culture in the Bush Era
Paul Bové
American Indian Autobiography
American Indian Autobiography
David Brumble
Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children's Literature
Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age of Children's Literature
Marah Gubar
Blood Libel: The Ritual Murder Accusation at the Limit of Jewish History
Blood Libel: The Ritual Murder Accusation at the Limit of Jewish History
Hannah Johnson
The Eloquence of the Vulgar: Language, Cinema and the Politics of Culture
The Eloquence of the Vulgar: Language, Cinema and the Politics of Culture
Colin MacCabe
T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot
Colin MacCabe
The Legacies of Caribbean Radical Politics
The Legacies of Caribbean Radical Politics
Shalini Puri
Modernism and the New Spain: Britain, Cosmopolitan Europe, and Literary History
Modernism and the New Spain: Britain, Cosmopolitan Europe, and Literary History
Gayle Rogers
Troublemakers: Power, Representation, and the Fiction of the Mass Worker
Troublemakers: Power, Representation, and the Fiction of the Mass Worker
William Scott
Approaches to Teaching the Works of Oscar Wilde
Approaches to Teaching the Works of Oscar Wilde
Philip Smith
Forms of English History in Literature, Landscape, and Architecture
Forms of English History in Literature, Landscape, and Architecture
John Twyning
Reformations of the Body: Idolatry, Sacrifice, and Early Modern Theater
Reformations of the Body: Idolatry, Sacrifice, and Early Modern Theater
Jennifer Waldron
Imaginary Citizens: Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640-
Imaginary Citizens: Child Readers and the Limits of American Independence, 1640-1868
Courtney Weikle-Mills
Portals of Power: Magical Agency and Transformation in Literary Fantasy
Portals of Power: Magical Agency and Transformation in Literary Fantasy
Lori Campbell
August Wilson: Pittsburgh Places in His Life and Plays
August Wilson: Pittsburgh Places in His Life and Plays
Christopher Rawson
Shakespeare & Outsiders
Shakespeare & Outsiders
Marianne Novy

I have always imagined Paradise will be a kind of library.

Borges

Literature is news that stays news.

Pound

Politics in a work of literature is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.

Stendhal
I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced in me an infinity of new images and feelings, that sometimes raised me to ecstasy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection.
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein’s Monster

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.

Hemingway

’Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem to be confidences or sides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear; the profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader; the profound thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart.

Emerson

Every allegedly great age is an age of translations.

Pound

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.

Rushdie

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

Toni Morrison, Nobel Acceptance Speech

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.

Eliot

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

Thoreau

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

Emily Dickinson

Poetry makes nothing happen.

Auden

Poetry Fetter’d, Fetters the Human Race! Nations are Destroy’d,
or Flourish, in proportion as Their Poetry Painting and Music,
are Destroy’d or Flourish!

Blake

On or about December 1910, human character changed.

Woolf

It is only a novel… or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

Austen

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
of prancing Poetry

Emily Dickinson

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