Raymond Williams’s work was always concerned with the relation between culture and society. This book focuses on specific texts and authors, exploring the historical and cultural sources of their particular forms of writing. In it, Williams examines dramatic form and language in Racine and Shakespeare; the politics of fiction in the English Jacobin novel; David Hume and Charles Dickens and the changing characteristics of English prose; Robert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, and the role of region and class in the English novel. Also included are Williams’s reflections on the rise of English studies, on their crisis as the literary traditions of Cambridge University were beset by the ‘structuralist controversy’, and on the wider implications of this redefinition of the critical field.

The editors of WRITING IN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETIES provide a thoughtful, carefully constructed collection that addresses the vital roles rhetoric and writing play as knowledge-making practices in diverse knowledge-intensive settings. The essays in this book examine the multiple, subtle, yet consequential ways in which writing is epistemic, articulating the central role of writing in creating, shaping, sharing, and contesting knowledge in a range of human activities in workplaces, civic settings, and higher education.

Writing and Society is a stunning exploration of the relationship between the growth in popular literacy and the development of new readerships and the authors addressing them. It is the first single volume to provide a year-by-year chronology of political events in relation to cultural production. This overview of debates in literary critical theory and historiography includes facsimile pages with commentary from the most influential books of the period. The author describes and analyses: * the development of literacy by status, gender and region in Britain * structures of patronage and censorship * the fundamental role of the publishing industry * the relation between elite literary and popular cultures * and the remarkable growth of female literacy and publication.

Author is particularly concerned with ancient Near East and contemporary West Africa.

Writing a New Society is the first extended study of the novel in Malay and is a groundbreaking study of the relationship between social change and literary practice. The book traces the emergence of the genre from the 1920s and, drawing on 26 of Malaysia's best-known novels, argues that the form was developed as a vehicle for transforming Malay ideas about themselves and their society. Virginia Hooker focuses on the underlying anxiety about racial identity, which underpins much of Malay writing and examines how ethnic identity is constructed and expressed. In a radical break with the traditional notion of Malay society as being totally dependent on the Sultan, the book shows how the novelists centre their writings on descriptions of 'ordinary' Malays, and present the household as the primary site of change. Here the novels develop and describe a 'private' sphere where Malays who previously had no rights begin to exercise their initiative. The concept of social equality which inspires the novelists subverts many of the themes of modern Malay politics.

Drawing on contemporary and historical examples, from clay tablets to touchscreen displays, this book is a general account of the place of writing in society. It explores the functions of writing and written language, analysing its consequences for language, society, economy and politics.

How does writing relate to speech? What impact does it have on social organisation and development? How do unwritten languages differ from those that have a written form and tradition? This book is a general account of the place of writing in society. Drawing on contemporary and historical examples, from clay tablets to touchscreen displays, the book explores the functions of writing and written language, analysing its consequences for language, society, economy and politics. It examines the social causes of illiteracy, demonstrating that institutions of central importance to modern society are built upon writing and written texts, and are characterised by specific forms of communication. It explores the social dimensions of spelling and writing reform, as well as of digital literacy, a new mode of expression and communication posing novel challenges to the student of language in society.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. So runs one of the most famous opening lines in English literature. Setting the scene in Pride and Prejudice, it deftly introduces the novel's core themes of marriage, money, and social convention, themes that continue to resonate with readers over 200 years later. Jane Austen wrote six of the best-loved novels in the English language, as well as a smaller corpus of unpublished works. Her books pioneered new techniques for representing voices, minds, and hearts in narrative prose, and, despite some accusations of a blinkered domestic and romantic focus, they represent the world of their characters with unsparing clarity. Here, Tom Keymer explores the major themes throughout Austen's novels, setting them in the literary, social, and political backgrounds from which they emerge, and showing how they engage with social tensions in an era dominated by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The Jane Austen who emerges is a writer shaped by the literary experiments and socio-political debates of her time, increasingly drawn to a fundamentally conservative vision of social harmony, yet forever complicating this vision through her disruptive ironies and satirical energy.

The Handbook of Research on Writing ventures to sum up inquiry over the last few decades on what we know about writing and the many ways we know it: How do people write? How do they learn to write and develop as writers? Under what conditions and for what purposes do people write? What resources and technologies do we use to write? How did our current forms and practices of writing emerge within social history? What impacts has writing had on society and the individual? What does it mean to be and to learn to be an active participant in contemporary systems of meaning? This cornerstone volume advances the field by aggregating the broad-ranging, interdisciplinary, multidimensional strands of writing research and bringing them together into a common intellectual space. Endeavoring to synthesize what has been learned about writing in all nations in recent decades, it reflects a wide scope of international research activity, with attention to writing at all levels of schooling and in all life situations. Chapter authors, all eminent researchers, come from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, archeology, typography, communication studies, linguistics, journalism, sociology, rhetoric, composition, law, medicine, education, history, and literacy studies. The Handbook’s 37 chapters are organized in five sections: *The History of Writing; *Writing in Society; *Writing in Schooling; *Writing and the Individual; *Writing as Text This volume, in summing up what is known about writing, deepens our experience and appreciation of writing—in ways that will make teachers better at teaching writing and all of its readers better as individual writers. It will be interesting and useful to scholars and researchers of writing, to anyone who teaches writing in any context at any level, and to all those who are just curious about writing.