Critical Insights: Wuthering Heights

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Although Wuthering Heights has often been overshadowed by the works of Charlotte Brontë, interest in the only novel written by her sister Emily has proved deep and abiding. The novel’s unadorned depiction of the darker side of love, exploring mental and physical cruelty as well as domestic abuse, made it controversial when it was published, as did its unflattering portrayal of Victorian morality and England’s class system.

This new volume delves into the novel’s themes, characters, and literary techniques, employing a range of critical approaches. Readers will find essays that trace its place within the literary landscape of its time, as well as overviews of previous criticism, allowing readers to engage with the ongoing scholarly discourse surrounding Emily Brontë’s masterpiece. Specific critical lenses including feminism, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies shed new light on the novel’s complexities, while comparative analyses uncover intriguing parallels and contrasts between Wuthering Heights and other works.

With its diverse range of critical approaches and engaging discussions, this anthology offers a valuable resource for scholars, students, and enthusiasts of Brontë’s famous novel, providing new insights and perspectives on this enduring literary classic. Significant themes that appear in the novel such as time and memory function, revenge, social class, gender, and family relationships are explored in depth within various historical, political, and social contexts.

The Critical Context section of the book contains the following essays:

• Unsettling Wuthering Heights: A Postcolonial Approach
• Wuthering Heights: A Critical History
• Wuthering Heights, Time and Memory
• Wild Heights: Brontë, Dickinson and the Poetics of Intensity

Following these four Critical Context essays is the Critical Readings section of this book, which contains the following essays:

• “A kind of sport”: Wuthering Heights as a Hybrid Novel
• Fairies, Fury, and Feminism: Recent Scholarship on Wuthering Heights
• Why Is Wuthering Heights a Demanding Read? The Narrative Complexity and Simplicity of Intergenerational Hatred
• Milk-blooded Cowards and Brute Beasts: A Georgian Crisis of Manhood Resolved in Wuthering Heights
• Love and Violence in Wuthering Heights: Is Heathcliff a Vampire?
• “Independent of all social intercourse”: Family, Isolation, and Domestic Abuse in Wuthering Heights
• Mistreated and Neglected Children in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
• Comedy in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
• Wuthering Heights on Screen: Academic Assessments to Film Adaptations
• “I am Heathcliff”: Definitions and Adaptations

Each essay in Critical Insights: Wuthering Heights includes a list of Works Cited and detailed endnotes. In the final section, Resources, a Chronology of Emily Brontë’s life is provided along with a list of her Works, and a Bibliography. Finally, this section closes with an About the Editor section, Contributors, and a detailed Index.

The Critical Insights Series distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world’s most studied literature. Edited and written by some of academia’s most distinguished literary scholars, Critical Insights: Wuthering Heights provides authoritative, in-depth insights that will be valuable students, researchers, and anyone who is interested in learning more about the themes in this novel. This volume is destined to become a valuable purchase for all.

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