Literature

Novels penned under a fake identity speak their own truths about fiction, says Rohan McWilliam

In the online era, authors are expected to do their own publicity and readers have much more power, finds Andrew Blake

Tributes paid to victim of Ethiopian Airlines crash

The Oxford professor and Costa Book of the Year award-winner on bringing a Holocaust survivor’s story into the present through ‘documentary novelisation’

Book of the week: Josh Cohen’s ruminations on slobbishness and lethargy will resonate with many readers

Peter J. Smith on an ambitious effort to mobilise Middle English literature for modern feminism

A study of the unnamed author offers a fresh angle on some of the tired debates about 20th-century literature, says Abigail Williams

Tributes paid to ‘greater scholar of the old school’ who was a renowned expert on Antonio Gramsci

Deborah Rogers on a testament to literature’s power to sustain life in the face of the indignities of disease and age

Rebecca Bowler on how middle-class women saw and were seen in the metropolis

Book of the week: writers shine a light on the disturbing gap between human rights and realpolitik, finds Matthew Joseph

Tributes paid to expert on Romanticism who was also a powerful poet in his own right

The lecturer in English language and literature on her love of children’s stories and her exploration of how the country house often takes on a character of its own in literature

The way ancient texts are treated in today’s classroom can validate or call into question students’ deep-set values and cultural expectations, finds Rachel Moss

Despite the time the playwright spent in the city, he never became a Londoner, says Lisa Hopkins

Tributes paid to founder of Stanford University’s department of comparative literature

Clare Griffiths discovers a nuanced account of human ambitions to increase the earth’s yields

Victims, heroes, delinquents: those returning from conflict unsettle society, writes Helena Goodwyn

Duncan Wu admires an effort to dismantle assumptions that those on the spectrum are unable to understand literature

Amid war, intellectual believers worked to imagine a future peacetime society, learns Leo Mellor

Tributes paid to Cambridge literary critic

Tributes paid to radio host turned literary scholar

Asia scholar says continent’s progress in STEM fields has been ‘to the detriment of the social sciences and humanities’

A useful critical study shows that George Orwell had a capacity for forcefully expressing views that contradict each other, says Andrew Palmer

Do we learn incorrect and harmful lessons from our hard-wired love of narrative? asks Gail Marshall

Richard Bradford shares an author’s infuriation that the ‘mongrel subject’ of literary studies fails to reflect real-life talk about literature

Margarita Vaysman finds out why Russian writers use negative images of Christ to explore religion

Professors shown to be mostly mad and mostly male, scholar claims

In recounting their journeys, female writers could talk about themselves, their values, their civic engagement and their responses to contemporary affairs in Britain, writes Abigail Williams

Scholars should not be walled off from mainstream biography’s playground of unlicensed fun, says Richard Bradford

Book of the week: Linnie Blake is taken on an illuminating tour of the thematic evolution and history of the horror genre

Tributes paid to a wide-ranging and highly innovative scholar of Renaissance literature

Courses in Dutch language and literature are now more popular in Poland than in the Netherlands, figures suggest

Louise Glück’s timeless essays about poetry are piquant declarations, writes David Gewanter

Book of the week: Charlie Pullen on what it means to read and teach literature in an era when opinion trumps fact

A study of seemingly irrational romantic feelings reveals much about sexuality in 19th-century literature, finds Charlotte Jones

Peter J. Smith wishes the UK would adopt a US approach to making the Bard more accessible

US academics consider how the Bard can be taught to students who may feel he has nothing to offer them

Supernatural subjects went hand in glove with explorers of the frozen poles, Simon Young learns

Seekers of dispassionate truth may be irritated by the moral passion of the likes of Dostoevsky, Zola and Chekhov, but it is a much stronger influence on public opinion, says David Aberbach  

Leading critic of marketised higher education takes aim at external appointment of vice-chancellors and the ‘student experience’

Rediscovering long-forgotten music from plays requires some imagination, finds John Jowett

Book of the week: An erudite biography of Christopher Columbus’ illegitimate son impresses Alexander Samson

Delve beneath the title and this portrait of four utopians has its rewards, writes Richard Howells

Janet Todd’s memoir considers the humiliations of illness and admits to ‘some embarrassment at not being dead’

James Stevens Curl on a camp counter-culture that injected whimsy and vitality into art and design

Novelists write short stories for Spanish university’s criminology degree

These engaging essays about violence could have broadened their scope, writes Jeffrey Meyers

An environmental biologist’s examination of the books we read during childhood is in equal parts charming and irritating, writes Shelley King

Book of the week: this careful analysis shows cognitive science can be a critical literary tool, writes Gail Marshall

Helen Fulton ponders whether romantic quests can lead readers to revelations

Literary studies offer us vital tools for understanding the roots of Brexit and forging new styles of community, argues new book

Indian lecturer joins with British colleagues to promote literature of those formerly called ‘untouchables’

Abigail Williams enjoys this demonstration of the many ways in which publications make meaning

Analysis from THE’s data team suggests big differences among disciplines in the amount of scholarship that fails to garner a citation 

The home of the US novelist and social critic offers a lens through which to explore his politics, writing and sexuality, says Kalwant Bhopal

Incisive analysis of what might have been wins over Robert Eaglestone to imaginary histories

Helena Goodwyn wishes for more novel arguments in this prescription to remedy people’s literary lacunae

Elleke Boehmer on a refreshing argument that verse allowed its makers and readers in the empire to adjust to new settings while maintaining ties with Britain

There is more to this ‘misunderstood’ man than just the romantic poetry for which he is best known, writes Hetta Howes