Andrew Bennett > Quotes

“A poem, novel or play that does not in some sense relate to previous texts is, in fact, literally unimaginable.”
― Andrew Bennett, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory

“Literature is, as Salman Rushdie has observed, ‘the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way’ (Rushdie 1990, 16).”
― Andrew Bennett, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory

“What is new about new historicism in particular is its recognition that history is the ‘history of the present’ (to borrow a phrase from the godfather of new historicism, Michel Foucault (see Foucault 1995, 29)), history is in the making rather than being monumental and closed, history is radically open to transformation and rewriting. Such work is motivated, as one commentator puts it, ‘not by a historical concern to understand the past’ so much as by ‘a critical concern to understand the present’ (Garland 2014, 373) and with how the present came to be as it is. New”
― Andrew Bennett, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory