Reading: who is doing what to whom? -- Vitality of language in nineteenth-century fiction -- Towards a reading of Dombey and son -- Reading late James -- Taking a nail for a walk: on reading Women in love -- His master's voice? The questioning of authority in literature -- Difficult language: the justification of Joyce's syntax in Ulysses -- Figures of desire: narration and fiction in To the lighthouse -- Innocence of P.G. Wodehouse -- Fictional topography of Samuel Beckett -- Muriel Spark and Jane Austen -- 'But time will not relent': modern literature and the experience of time.
