Critical Insights: Friendship

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Friendships of all kinds have been an integral part of literature for centuries. From traditional friendships to bonds between humans and animals to alliances between humans and fictional creatures, this theme has appeared within literature in diverse ways, entertaining readers and offering important insights into the human condition. 

This new addition to the Critical Insights series guides readers through the historical, philosophical, and sociological perspectives of friendship in literature and examines the complexities of relations between characters and how those complexities have enriched the tradition of storytelling. The ways in which friendship has appeared in literature in a variety of eras, cultures, and locations are also explored.

Opening with an introductory essay that situates the theme of friendship within the broader context of literary studies, critical approaches in subsequent chapters include approaching the subject historically to trace how the concept of friendship has evolved over time, comparing the warrior-bonds of ancient epics to the platonic ideals of Renaissance humanism to the psychological complexities of the modern novel.

Overviews of previous literary criticism on this popular topic synthesize insights from scholars who have analyzed friendship in specific texts.

A few essays apply particular critical lenses to the theme, such as feminist theory, queer theory, or postcolonial theory, to uncover new dimensions of the literary representations of friendship. The collection also features comparative analyses that juxtapose how friendship functions in works from different cultures, time periods, or genres.

The four Critical Context essays include:

• Enobarbus and Friendship
• The Janie-Pheoby Friendship in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Survey of Critical Commentary
• Modern Fairy-Tale Friendships in Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles
• Huck, Jim, and James: Friendship in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Percival Everett’s James

The Critical Context essays are followed by nine Critical Readings essays which include: 

• The Hero Pair: Friendship and Genre in Shakespeare’s Plays 
• Friendship and Love: Dyads and Differences in Jane Austen 
• When Friends Speak Up for Friends: Jack London’s Legacy of Animal Friendship in The Call of the Wild
• Loneliness, Companionship, and Friendship in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men
• Friendship as Deliverance: Self, Other, and World in the Diary of Anne Frank
• C. S. Lewis and Warren Hamilton Lewis: Conspirators, Collaborators, and Companions
• Friendship in Langston Hughes’s The Best of Simple
• Breaking Down Boundaries: Inter-Species Friendships and Alliances in Harry Potter
• “It’s really nice to have a good carer”: Caring and the Futility of Friendship in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

Each essay in Critical Insights: Friendship includes a list of Works Cited and detailed endnotes. In the final section, Resources, provides a list of Additional Works on Friendship for those who wish to further explore this theme followed by a Bibliography. Finally, this section closes with an About the Editor section, Contributors, and a detailed Index.

The Critical Insights Series distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world’s most studied literature. Edited and written by some of academia’s most distinguished literary scholars, Critical Insights: Friendship provides authoritative, in-depth scholarship that students and researchers will rely on for years. This volume is destined to become a valuable purchase for all.

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