Modern literature and education Literary modernism Postmodernism Feminist literature

8 Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Forget about the movie. This is a masterpiece and could only work as a novel. It’s the Homeric story of a soldier trying to return to his wife and home after fighting in a war – here the American Civil War. And it’s also a moving love story which ends heartbreakingly. Like The Odyssey, it’s a series of episodes that would normally fragment a novel’s unity but each one is so powerful and mysterious and so much in tune with the dominant theme that it succeeds completely. A book that will resonate in the memory.
9 The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox
This big melodramatic novel is almost a parody of the Victorian novel, with its complex plot revolving around the traditional themes of disinheritance and usurpation. The embittered central character, Edward Glyver, starts by murdering a randomly chosen stranger just to prove that he can do it. He even less sympathetic after that. This is a clever novel but a very cold one.
10 The Asylum by John Harwood
We’re back in The Woman in White territory with another case of apparent mistaken identity and the consequent incarceration of a young woman in a madhouse. This time she speaks for herself and, plunged into her dislocated and disorienting world, readers have to decide for themselves what is the truth.
English Literature vs Literature in English
Since the two terms, English literature and literature in English, sound somewhat similar and confusing, let us find out whether there is any difference between English literature and literature in English. The term literature refers to the collective body of literary productions scattered all over the world, apparently written in not just one language, but many. As the study of literary work has interested many people from different parts of the world for ages, literature has become a subject taught at schools, colleges, and universities offering diverse programmes for students. Since it is a broad term, it has many sub-branches which refer to literature either country-wise, e.g. American literature, French literature, English literature, etc., or chronological period-wise, e.g. Old literature, Classical literature, Victorian literature, modern literature, etc., on larger geographical area-wise, western literature, eastern literature, south Asian literature, etc. Literature is written in any language native to a country, and regional literature encompasses literary work written in many languages of the region. This article explores the differences between English literature and literature in English.