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Critical Insights: Native Son
Amenia, NJ: Salem Press: Grey House, 2025
Richard Wright's first novel set off powerful shockwaves when it burst on the USA in 1940 and it still reverberates in the twenty-first century. It is a compelling, immersive narrative of a young Black man, living in poverty on Chicago's South Side, who inadvertently kills a wealthy young white woman and deliberately murders his Black girlfriend, and who is hunted down, tried, and sentenced to death. This volume brings multiple perspectives to bear on Native Son, setting it in its historical and literary contexts, examining its early reception, exploring the responses of other African American writers, linking it to the literature of murder, and relating it to disciplines such as psychoanalysis, sociology, phenomenology, Marxism and existentialism. It also scrutinizes the three film versions of the story. Critical Insights: Native Son is essential reading for today's students and critics of Wright's novel.
Critical Insights: In Cold Blood
Amenia, NJ. Salem Press: Grey House, 2020
Truman Capote’s compelling and harrowing account of the murder of the Clutter family and the subsequent trial and execution of the killers made a huge impact when first published in 1965, and continues to provoke controversy, find readers, and generate critical debate. This volume offers a rich range of perspectives on Capote’s major work, exploring it as a “non-fiction novel” and as a “true crime” story, tracing its reception by reviewers, critics and the general public, discussing its impact on the real-life community and individuals it describes, and examining the crucial ethical, judicial and penal issues it raises.
Critical Insights: The Kite Runner
Amenia, NJ. Salem Press: Grey House, 2020
Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner combines a compelling, moving narrative, memorable characters and situations, powerful depictions of suffering and guilt, an urgent quest for redemption, and an intense engagement with the fraught and complex history and politics of Afghanistan and its relations with American culture.
Critical Insights: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Amenia, NY. Salem Press: Grey House, 2020
Shakespeare's best-known, most-loved and sometimes controversial comedy is an intricately structured drama that employs a rich range of poetry and prose to juxtapose fairies and mortals, artisans and aristocrats, court and forest, fantasy and reality, reason and madness. This volume offers a variety of new perspectives on its critical history, complex form, rich language, key themes, and the many theatrical and cinematic versions it has generated.
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'as entertaining a guide to contemporary critical debates as one could hope for ... [Tredell's] questions are informed, explicit and seek always to connect specific issues to overall literary and political contexts'
Conversations with Critics
2nd edition
Great Britain and Singapore: Verbivaracious Press, 2015
Nicolas Tredell interviews John Barrell; Catherine Belsey; Bernard Bergonzi; Christine Brooke-Rose; David Caute; Brian Cox; Donald Davie; Terry Eagleton; Stephen Heath; Robert Hewison; Philip Hobsbaum; Lisa Jardine CBE; Sir Frank Kermode; Colin MacCabe; Karl Miller; Sir Roger Scruton; C. H. Sisson CH; George Steiner; Raymond Tallis; Dame Marina Warner
'scrupulously researched [...] 20 lengthy and fascinating conversations with prominent literary figures'
Isobel Armstrong, Times Educational Supplement
'as entertaining a guide to contemporary critical debates as one could hope for ... [Tredell's] questions are informed, explicit and seek always to connect specific issues to overall literary and political contexts'
Mark Ford, Times Literary Supplement
Cinemas of the Mind: A Critical History of Film Theory
Duxford: Icon, 2002
'[A] resourceful and stimulating study of classical and recent film theory ... an invaluable work'
John Conomos, Screening the Past
'an excellent introduction to the rich history of film theory'
Nicolas Magenham, Cercles
'clear and informative exposition and some nicely chosen stills'
Richard Armstrong, Kamera 03
The Fiction of Martin Amis: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000
'a useful volume for students ... Tredell makes a good job of selection, editing prudently and generously as required, and splices the extracts together well'
Year's Work in English Studies
William Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury / As I Lay Dying: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999
'The criticism in this Guide aims to provide a series of suggestions, insights and indicators that will help us to navigate Faulkner's labyrinths and to emerge with a richly enhanced understanding of the styles, structures and multiple meanings of two of his greatest works'
Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999
'this book is engaging, lively and scholarly: a rare combination'
Year's Work in English Studies
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'[An] excellent survey of essays, articles and reviews on Great Expectations'
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998
'[An] excellent survey of essays, articles and reviews on Great Expectations'
Professor Bernard N. Schilling,The Rain of Years: Great Expectations and the World of Dickens
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby: A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998
'[This book] trace[s] the novel's critical reputation from 1925 into the 1990s, interweaving Tredell's narrative with generous excerpts from reviews and critical essays'
Jackson R. Bryer, The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald
'[It] skilfully imbeds excerpts from reviews, periodical articles and book sections in a narrative of the novel's critical reception and interpretation'
Jackson R. Bryer, Approaches to Teaching Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
