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.

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.

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

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.

The Book in Society: An Introduction to Print Culture examines the origins and development of one of the most important inventions in human history. Books can inform, entertain, inspire, irritate, liberate, or challenge readers, and their forms can be tangible and traditional, like a printed, casebound volume, or virtual and transitory, like a screen-page of a cell-phone novel. Written in clear, non-specialist prose, The Book in Society first provides an overview of the rise of the book and of the modern publishing and bookselling industries. It explores the evolution of written texts from early forms to contemporary formats, the interrelationship between literacy and technology, and the prospects for the book in the twenty-first century. The second half of the book is based on historian Robert Darnton’s concept of a book publishing “communication circuit.” It examines how books migrate from the minds of authors to the minds of readers, exploring such topics as the rise of the modern notion of the author, the role of states and others in promoting or restricting the circulation of books, various modes of reproducing and circulating texts, and how readers’ responses help shape the form and content of the books available to them. Feature boxes highlighting key texts, individuals, and developments in the history of the book, carefully selected illustrations, and a glossary all help bring the history of the book to life.

Explores the unconventional ways we communicate what we know about society to others. Becker explores the many ways knowledge about society can be shared and interpreted through different forms of telling—fiction, films, photographs, maps, even mathematical models—many of which remain outside the boundaries of conventional social science. Eight case studies, including the photographs of Walker Evans, the plays of George Bernard Shaw, the novels of Jane Austen and Italo Calvino, and the sociology of Erving Goffman, provide support for Becker’s argument: that every way of telling about society is perfect—for some purpose. The trick is, as Becker notes, to discover what purpose is served by doing it this way rather than that. From publisher description.

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.