phd english literature

phd english literature

Exploring Contemporary Themes in English Literature: A PhD Study

1. Introduction to the Study of English Literature

The development of literature writing in research career development is an essential requirement to create a culture of excellence. This development also reflects the quality and diversity of critical and academic literature in the British and international perspective. In indicating the quality of the volume of writing on one aspect of literature, universities may offer degrees in the subject and surpass each other in the comparative number by which famous writers are appointed. Despite problems such as the caste outbreaks of an increasing number of universities, the funding crisis, and such vanishing arts, universities and university departments in contemporary countries must demonstrate their scholarly excellence in contemporary projects. Educational evaluation is established by written study or similar contributions that facilitate the improvement of schemes, the policy at another level, and student knowledge. While running undergraduate projects and regularly after Ph.D. studies, academic writers demonstrate their career path and their parents and also help to support internal research strengths. The recent research literature currently supports the financial scenario. In short, high-quality PhD work in literature is not just a fascinating intellectual pastime, but it is a significant requirement for research competence in contemporary universities.

English literature is a respectable and, in many ways, a respectable study subject. The study of literature provides students and graduates with a wide range of excellent analytical and evaluative skills, which are a valuable addition to a general liberal education. A study of English literature, by definition, is a study of various types and genres. The diverse resources favorably compare the subject to different perspectives on the method and content of many other disciplines. However, the leading source of literature study is still words and ideas. This approach puts resources, the primary interest of literature, on the main paths, and most essays’ work will likewise elevate the value of “reading,” “critique,” or most literary concepts more than it will elevate the worth of the issue.

2. Literary Theory and Criticism: A Framework for Analysis

By urging us to use one technique more than the many seldom-used tools, to attend more to convention and less to singularity, to conventional and less to marginal, to majors and minors, and above all to attain a steady hand, these guides signify. It has a past, which reflects various unrelated pursuits and in part had no serious manner of developing what it was and what it might do in the future. The nature of critical thinking is expressive of what is distinct. There is a strain of criticism which calls the nature of the interpretive enterprise into question. The enterprise is challenged in such a way as to make the audience increasingly aware that the nature of criticism is itself under critical scrutiny. What justifies limiting oneself to a type of criticism that calls itself “interpretation”? If you have written a novel which is ambitious, the question as to why being a novel is necessarily the best way of being ambitious has become a very important issue. There is another fashion of dismissing “interpretations” that will be shown to decrease significantly if we reconsider conventional requirements.

There are many different ways of understanding literature. Several of the classics of the Western literary tradition define criticism and lay down principles of interpretation that are not only widely accepted but are also of major historical importance. These “founders” often do this through showing as well as through telling. They show by giving memorable readings of particular texts. Careful interpretive and comparative analysis also reveals strengths and limitations. Some ways of interpreting enjoy a central place in the discipline, others are often persuasive but could be considered merely advisory or even imprudent. The theories, the schools and the movements that supplant and coexist with these offer different ways of reminding us that criticism is an indefinite, if crucial, activity.

3. Contemporary Themes in English Literature

“Contemporary” may be thought of (within the context of this thesis) as themes raised in the modern era period that lasted from the second half of the 20th century and is widely viewed as occurring from approximately 1945 to the present, but within this context could be extended as the piece is from one of the American Literature graduate courses. It is more difficult to interpret modern where a particular piece of literature needs to have been written within a defined timescale that is arguable not long enough for the relevance of contemporary to be challenged. Conceptually, the definition of a subject may not be straightforward in relation to other issues. The modern title has been chosen from American Literature, whereas the contemporary theme has been taken from ‘special focus’ topics, so anyone reading this piece from the literature sections may think of more without a clear idea of the students’ chosen literature.

Contemporary themes refer to those issues and ideas that are relevant to modern society and have become recognized and popular within literature as well. This research had a wide and varied interpretation within the chapters presented by the two students. There is no doubt that contemporary themes reflect the modern society we live in today. Such themes can include sibling relationships, gang culture, cause and effect of crime, time and place, young adults who self-harm, the decisions made by a young mother who is under social pressure, the insights gained from World War One poetry, and whether global warming is making an impact on literature. The other subject area seemed to have been much broader with many presenting their chapters and the chosen titles had originated through class discussions.

4. Case Studies and Analysis of Selected Literary Works

Cameron’s fantasy novel “The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet”, written nine years before Moonlanding, is bolstered by the social media Shakespeare & Company type bookshop and the pride in the novels of Margery Sharp and Eleanor Smith. The choice of Cameron allows exploration of an unassuming writer whose reputation may not be on the same level as others but whose hero attempts to achieve artistic personal growth during his quest and where both Earth and Orbit are ruled by dictators for whom, like big business on Mars, his creation is art as commodity funded by consumer choice. Cameron was an author of novels about kids, their complaints appeased by a sense of direction and home, with just a little flexibility in their gangs or summer friends. Such occupations added for the irrelevance of money, the irrevocable complacency of invisibility and endless time, the author’s editorial versatility. The story demonstrates a twist on the quest-cum-education, progression based on self-creation, and inclusivity.

This theme is the aspect of personal experiences in detailed literature where the female contemporary English writers cited in the previous chapter have been major influences. Cleanliness and motherliness, stereotypes of the working class and racial others – all were there, but now titillatingly, uncoverable, wreathed in linguistic punnery, derivative of Kafka, in essence governed by an aesthetic compulsion. As always in such domestic settings, beneath the trickle of everyday exchange, an all-dominant issue of general concern, in short – the condition of being human. In these books and articles, the novel, once a catalyst against dominant cultural notions of truth, once a cultural problem over the nature of representation or by extension, the nature of life itself, has been dissected and quantified. Yet Gee is correct; art does exist as part of a continuum, a frame around life, is in dialogue with and responds to events in the same way as we hope that inquiry can respond and debate with these authors about the nature of aesthetic beauty, issues of representation, orders of discourse, and an ever-fluid relationship between texts and life. Most novelists, in contrast, can but aspire to offer.

From this point, the project discusses how the ideas explored in the introduction are evident in the work of selected contemporary female writers. The first writer considered is Maggie Gee. The project explores the representation of the human condition and the problematic use of language in her novel “My Cleaner”. These themes and the idea that literature is related to life events are further developed in a reading of “Hothouse” by Boris Kachka. The project then looks at the psychological motivations of characters and the comparison between self-creation in reality and in social media in “The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet” by Eleanor Cameron. Gillian Bradshaw’s “Island of Ghosts” is examined through the lens of whether enlightenment that comes at too high a social cost is worth achieving. The paper finishes with the exploration of a cautionary tale about the possible limitations of historical ‘prime time’ series like “Boardwalk Empire” or “Downton Abbey” in “Art in the Blood” by Bonnie MacBird.

5. Conclusion and Future Directions in English Literature Research

The structure of every literature thesis is geared to privilege this reflexive discussion, followed by novel in-depth discussion, and an overview of any interpretation drivers, which add further insight and dimension to the works annihilated ferreted out in the sociology of writing and the importance of repeated inspiration. The work can also find itself critiqued and amended in line with the new empirical, theoretical, and epistemological knowledge shared in the field. The research act, which draws attention to areas already addressed and to the concerns of reading who acquire awareness and cultural relativism, and the global, limited, and infinite diversity and differentiation that enhance the mental sphere, is a guidepost and provide readings with different aspects (which could be social, economic, or ethical or spiritual) leads us to conscious fruition, and vice versa.

Considering exactly what it is we do every time we read (consume literature) or research and contribute to positions and topics of debate in the field (generate meaning and expand on the creative and educational potential for literature), the article offers the potential for a further discussion of information activities around literature. With this in mind, literature research as represented by the current study, and the research sources underpinning, creates a space for dialogue. It also stimulates the essential reflexive considerations of content, form, and purpose required to analyze and engage completely and objectively with the literature.

More particularly, as literature is adapted to and then represents and partly feeds on the awareness of contemporary themes, further literature research (investigating, debating, and thinking through literature themes and literature’s treatment of these) can be framed, through interpreting, criticizing, and promoting meaningful understanding, around the presented study. The project also illustrates the cyclical process that can stem from it, and which is likely to define literature studies in the future. The article thus highlights the need for an argument foundation and further continuity in contemporary literature research, and attempts to position reading and readers, and research these audiences undergo, at the center of literary debate.

In conclusion, this PhD project has sought to examine key contemporary themes and concepts in contemporary literature. In doing so, the project has demonstrated the multiple ways in which contemporary, often cross-disciplinary literature can embody, comment on, and intersect with such diverse and genotypically contemporary themes as social, economic, and political marginality, dealing with trauma, cosmopolitanism, memory, identity, the influence of gender on creativity, as well as ethical considerations. On that note, the project has laid an argumentative basis for further research.