Peter Ackroyd - by J Gibson & J Wolfreys (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Peter Ackroyd: The Ludic and Labyrinthine Text offers the reader the first major critical study in English of one of Britain's most inventive, playful and significant writers of the twentieth century. This study playfully, yet rigorously engages with these aspects of literary stylistics and personal and national identity so important in Ackroyd's work. Rejecting the postmodern label previously attached to the author, Gibson and Wolfreys provide a consideration of all Ackroyd's writing to date, from his poetry and critical thought, to his novels and biographies, offering an indispensable account to anyone interested in Ackroyd and the condition of the novel at the end of the twentieth century.

Review Quotes

'The Laughter of Peter Ackroyd - no, this is not a novel by Agatha Christie, it is just what this exhilarating and brilliant book by two critics, one deceased, the other alive, and who never met, will make you hear: a polyphonic and polymorphous perverse laughter that keeps resounding in the ludic labyrinth of our libraries. Jeremy Gibson and Julian Wolfreys lead us in and out of this enjoyable maze by writing definitive autotextography of the most gifted literary murderer and resurrectionist of today.' - Jean-Michel Rabaté, Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania

'Julian Wolfreys and Jeremy Gibson provide readers with the kind of original and far-reaching criticism that Peter Ackroyd's oeuvre has always deserved. Innovative and thought-provoking, this insightful volume should inspire a new scholarly appreciation for Ackroyd's considerable artistic accomplishments.' - Kenneth Womack, Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University

'Much like Ackroyd's novels, Peter Ackroyd becomes a moving and entertaining conversation which readers will want to join in with...' - Jenny Bavidge, University of Greenwich, MLR

About the Author

Author Julian Wolfreys: Julian Wolfreys is Professor of Modern Literature and Culture at Loughborough University, UK. He was previously Professor in Literature at the University of Florida, USA. His teaching and research is concerned with 19th- and 20th-century British literary and cultural studies, literary theory, the poetics and politics of identity, and the idea of the city. He is the series editor of Transitions and has written many course texts for Literature students, notably The English Literature Companion.