Description
About the Author
Alastair Fowler is Regius Professor Emeritus of Edinburgh University, and was previously Professor of English at the University of Virginia. For many years he divided his time between the United States and Britain, where he now lives. His publications include an annotated edition of Paradise Lost (1968); Kinds of Literature (1982); and Renaissance Realism (2003). His interest in literary names goes back to his Witter Byner lecture at Harvard in 1974.
Reviews
An amusing, accessible book this volume merits a wide readership: specialists will hasten to pore over Fowler's comments on Paradise Lost or Lolita or on the characters' names in Twelfth Night, while the experienced reader will browse the book as a whole with recurring smiles of delight and gasps of edification. * E.D. Hill, Choice *
this book is something of a marvel. * London Review of Books *
Fowler now in his eighties has more learning between his ears than most of us could acquire in eight lifetimes ... [his] book has the inspirational virtue that it makes one think one's own thoughts. * John Sutherland, Literary Review *
[an] engagingly and sometimes overflowingly serendipitous book ... lively and informative ... generally delightful * Claude Rawson, Times Literary Supplement *
Unusually for a scholar of such deep erudition, Fowler appears to have either the modesty or common sense to follow Frank Kermode's precept: "Names can have power, but not always." * Alexandra Mullen, The New Criterion *
Book Information
ISBN 9780198709688
Author Alastair Fowler
Format Paperback
Page Count 296
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 374g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 145mm * 17mm