The Revised Orwell

"Written to address recent discussions of George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, this impressive collection of interpretive writing debates the work's value as a portent for our future and questions much of the second-guessing that has taken place about how Orwell might have responded to events he did not live to see. Essays included in the work were prepared by scholars from a broad range of disciplines--intellectual historians, literary critics, experts on communication, psychologists, students of popular culture, sociologists, linguists, and classicists--to generate fresh new perspectives on Orwell and the Orwellian myth." "Included among the essays is one of the first Soviet critiques of Nineteen Eighty-Four to appear in English translation; the piece was previously published in the Russian literary magazine Novy Mir in 1989. Several essays discuss the novel's literary artistry, its popular and modernist appeal, as well as the ways in which Orwell made use of psychoanalytic techniques." "The Revised Orwell contains a lively selection of scholarly writing that reveals Orwell to be a controversial, politically idiosyncratic writer, but one well within the mainstream of British cultural history. These works are solidly researched and fully developed; they will make lasting contributions to Orwell studies."--BOOK JACKET.